


March

by bluesamutra



Series: March [2]
Category: The X-Files
Genre: F/M, Post-Episode: s06e10 Tithonus
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-03
Updated: 2021-03-03
Packaged: 2021-03-16 17:20:32
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 9
Words: 49,908
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29828304
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bluesamutra/pseuds/bluesamutra
Summary: A routine murder investigation in Chicago where not everything is as it seems.
Relationships: Fox Mulder & Dana Scully, Fox Mulder/Dana Scully
Series: March [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2191176
Comments: 5
Kudos: 47





	1. Chapter 1

* * *

Chicago, March 6th

"..sixty-six, sixty-seven, sixty-eight..."

Kurt Roberts counted his footfalls in sets of 100, the numbers rolling from his tongue on an exhale as he breathed steadily through his mouth and navigated his way along the rutted concrete path between North Cannon Drive and South Lagoon. Around him, the air grew cool; the unseasonable warmth earlier in the day having given way to an icy breeze off Lake Michigan when the sun dropped in the sky.

He loved running at this time of day, when the world seemed to continue on around him as he slipped through it, unnoticed under the dull yellow glow from the streetlamps; the rhythmic pound of his Asics lost in the hubbub of a city in flux between day and night. For Kurt, the running hour was his time to switch off, to focus only on his breathing and his pace, and let his mind wander.

It wandered back to the previous night; to the club in Old Town his buddies had dragged him to, telling he had to get the hell over Lila before his dick rusted over. He'd complied reluctantly, his heart still a little achy; his pride still a little wounded after the love of his life left him for a deputy-deputy orange slicer with the Bears. They'd been together four years, since sophomore year at college, and he'd even been starting to think that this was it, she was 'the one', until he dropped by one night three months ago to find her doing warm-ups with limp-dick. Or not so limp, as the case had been. Even now, Kurt's stomach clenched as he thought about it. He shook his head and started another count.

The club had been new, a lot of buzz in the Tribune Lifestyle pages, and they'd only gotten in because Kurt's roommate knew a guy who was fucking one of the hostesses. For the first couple of hours he'd felt completely out of place as his buddies hit the dance floor and the bar with equal enthusiasm. He'd sat in their VIP booth, nursing the same bottle of Bud until it was warm and tasted like gnat's piss, and then he'd heard a voice asking him if he was ok.

He'd looked up into the concerned eyes of one of the most beautiful women he'd ever seen. She'd been like a fucking goddess, sparking blue eyes staring down at him from a face that was like sculpted porcelain, and he'd stammered a response so completely dweebish, it was a wonder she hadn't laughed at him right then and there. But she hadn't; she'd slid into the booth next to him and leaned in close to his ear so he could hear every smoky word.

The next thing he knew, they were back in his apartment, bouncing off the walls until his next-door neighbor had literally hammered on the wall and yelled for them to shut the hell up. They'd collapsed in a heap on the bed then, laughing and fucking, and ascertaining once and for all that his dick had definitely not rusted over.

It was the stuff dreams were made of. And then this morning, when he'd woken up, aching and completely sated, she'd been gone. No note, no trace. The only thing that told him it had really happened was the friction burn on his cock. The plummeting temperature had emptied the park early, and as he neared the left turn that would lead him to the zoo, Kurt realized he was alone on the path. Around him, barren branches swayed in the wind and the air smelled salty.

Kurt slowed to a walk, catching his breath and lacing his fingers behind his head to stretch his triceps.

"Hello," called a smoky voice, familiar and beckoning, and Kurt whipped round, a smile already forming on his face.

"Hey! What are you doing here?" he said dropping his hands and stepping toward the beautiful woman, now only a few feet away. Her hair fluttered luxuriously in the breeze, russet under the street lamp, and her black running gear clung to her neat figure. He could smell the spicy aroma of her perfume.

"I was looking for you," she said, and there was something weird in her tone that Kurt couldn't quite figure out. He cocked his head, puzzled.

"What do you mean? How did you know -?"

"I know everything," she said softly, without a smile; without any kind of expression at all, and Kurt frowned in confusion.

"I don't understand?"

Her face was like a mask as she stepped towards him and he felt the hairs on the back of his neck stand on end, fear and the freezing cold air chilling the sweat on his skin.

"You will."

He didn't even feel himself hit the ground. 

***

Georgetown, March 7th

Assistant Director Jana Cassidy smiled demurely and drained the last of her non-fat cappuccino as Walter Skinner slid his Bureau Amex into the check holder and handed it to the waiter.

"You're expensing this?" she asked accusingly, her mouth twitching in a smile, and he shrugged unrepentantly, broad shoulders softened by the charcoal knit sweater he wore. He looked very different from the man she knew at the FBI, the man she'd worked with for almost twenty years, and she couldn't help but think that being away from the Bureau suited Walter Skinner.

"They owe us."

The tone of his voice reminded Jana that the FBI owed Walter for more than just unpaid overtime and the annihilation of his social life. "That they do," she granted, pulling on her coat and eyeing the sliver of dove-grey sky visible through the window. She wondered whether she'd get back to her car before the snow started. And whether she'd have time to stop by Liz Claiborne on the way.

Outside, the icy March air slapped her face and made her eyes water, and she knotted a Hermes scarf around her neck in a futile effort to exclude the cold.

"Well Jana, it's been a pleasure. As always," Walter said, as they reluctantly moved away from the warmth of the swinging restaurant door and set off on Wisconsin towards M Street. He flipped up the collar of his coat to bracket his scarf, and looked, Jana thought, a lot warmer than she felt. Except his head; mottled white in the cold and scarcely protected by what little hair he had left. She tried to remember what he'd looked like when he still had hair, but the fact was, as far back as she could remember, Walter had always been bald. Luckily it suited him.

"We shouldn't leave it so long next time," she agreed, really meaning it, as they wove between the Sunday shoppers, shoes clacking on the red-paved sidewalk. She and Walter had been just two classes apart at the Academy, and over the years they'd crossed paths in Field Offices and on cases as they each worked their way up the ranks. The thing about Walter was that he was never willing to step on someone else to get ahead. The same couldn't be said for everyone on the Exec floor.

Edging past Gap and its endless display of mellow yellow casual wear, Jana squinted at a familiar face coming out of the Ralph Lauren store across the street.

"Isn't that Dana Scully?" she asked, gesturing vaguely, and Walter's neck snapped as he turned to look, meerkat-like, across the crowded sidewalk. Jana stifled a smirk at his obvious interest, and the light flush that crossed his cheeks when he caught sight of the pretty redhead meandering down the sidewalk with an armful of shopping bags.

"Yes," he muttered, winding his neck back in and looking a little peeved by his uncontrolled reaction.

Over the road, a silver Cirrus pulled up to the curb alongside Agent Scully, the driver leaning toward the passenger window to call something to her. She spun around to look, glossy hair bouncing, and as she stepped closer to the vehicle, she smiled softly. Even from fifty feet away, Jana could see the difference it made to the younger woman's usually serious face.

"She's very attractive," she observed slyly, watching Walter out of the corner of her eye. He grunted noncommittally and shoved his hands deeper into his pockets and Jana didn't have the heart to tease him further. "I heard she was injured recently?" she continued, serious now, and her pale blue eyes were genuinely regretful. "How's she recovering?"

"Well enough, I suppose. They don't report to me anymore." The undertone in both his voice and posture suggested Agent Scully would be in much better health if they did, and Jana pictured the Agent sitting before her at the OPR panel the previous summer, composed and dignified, in the face of the belligerent ravings of her dogmatic partner. Her dogmatic partner, who Jana determined as she squinted in the late February sun, appeared to be cruising Georgetown in a filthy Chrysler. She watched as Agent Scully ducked her head for a better view of her partner, lips quirking in amusement as they spoke. After a moment, she opened the car door and eased herself into the passenger seat; her movements slow and economical, revealing a body still healing. Jana felt a pang of sympathy at this latest trauma.

"Are they together?" she asked, as she observed Agent Mulder watching his partner's careful movements with concern, and then, when she was finally settled in the passenger seat, he reached a hand up to caress her cheek. A tender gesture, more akin to lovers than partners.

"What?"

"Are they sleeping together?" she clarified, impatient with Walter's obtuseness. He surely wasn't oblivious to the idle chatter in the bullpen; or the scene in front of his eyes now.

"Jesus Jana, I don't know!" he grunted, "What difference does it make?"

"No difference," she demurred, watching Agent Mulder merge into the traffic and continue south down Wisconsin. "But he went to Antarctica for her; there's obviously a depth of feeling."

Beside her, Walter sighed and pulled a hand from the depths of his coat pocket to run it over the buzz of hair on the back of his head. "Actually, Jana, I have a favor to ask you."

Jana glanced down the road in time to see the mud- spattered sedan disappearing into the distance. When she turned her gaze back to Walter, he was studying her face. She took in his imploring expression, and felt her heart sink.

***

"You looking for a good time, Red?"

Dana Scully's head snapped round to find the source of the voice, calling to her over the buzz of Sunday afternoon in Georgetown. Around her, families meandered down the red-paved sidewalk window-shopping, jostling, fragments of conversation, of laughter, drifting past her. Biting the corner of her lip to stifle a smile, she stepped up to the curb and ducked her head to look in the open passenger window.

"Depends. You offering?"

Pouty lips grinned around a wooden coffee stirrer and warm brown eyes looked her up and down. "Uh huh."

Scully glanced around at the busy sidewalk, trying to come up with a witty rejoinder and drawing a blank. Since she'd returned from New York a month earlier, unsteady on her feet and emotionally shaken by her brush with death, she'd seen a new side to Mulder. For the first time in five years, their contact had suddenly been limited to the purely social. No crappy domestic terrorism cases. No X- Files. No global conspiracies. Just Mulder and her; and this Mulder, playful, flirty Mulder, was new to her. And she found she kind of liked it.

"You're a long way from Alexandria, Mulder," she said finally, glancing at a red BMW as the driver swerved around Mulder's illegally stopped Chrysler, gesticulating rudely in the rear-view mirror.

Mulder watched the BMW accelerate away before returning his attention to her with a little shrug, his teeth worrying the stirrer. "You're supposed to be taking it easy," he observed with a pointed glance at her shopping bags. "Wanna ride?"

"I don't know. My mother always told me not to get in cars with strange men."

He looked amused. "Get in the car, Scully; I'm freezing my ass off just looking at you out there."

She rolled her eyes and reached for the handle, sliding into the passenger seat carefully, mindful of the abused muscles in her stomach, which protested any sudden movement even after almost six weeks of R&R and daily physical therapy sessions.

Stifling a sigh, Scully twisted in her seat to toss her bags on the rear seat and stiffened when a burning ache sliced through her abdomen. She closed her eyes briefly as the pain, and her frustration at her condition, subsided, and when she opened them, Mulder was looking at her with concern. She opened her mouth to... berate him for caring? Tell him she was fine? She wasn't even sure, but as took the bags from her and set them on the seat behind her, he kept his eyes trained on hers, his expression one of unconcealed affection, and it stopped her short.

"It won't be like this forever, Scully," he said softly, brushing the soft pads of his fingers over the chilled skin of her cheek. "You'll be back to normal soon."

"I know," she croaked, unnerved by the warmth of his hand on her face, the secret thrill that listening to the rumble of his voice sent down her spine.

Another swipe of his thumb across her cheekbone and he smiled, settling back into his seat and glancing into the wing mirror. "So you're done with the oatmeal phase right?" he asked, pulling into the traffic and glancing back at her with a smile. "Because I'm in the mood for food with flavor."

"Just as long as you're not in the mood for Indian. Or Thai."

"Thai," he groaned, teasingly "I could really go for some Tom Yum.."

"If you want to spend the afternoon watching me throw up, knock yourself out."

"Maybe next time, then," Mulder said mildly, "How about Italian? Fat Tony issued a profit warning since you got sick."

Scully snorted quietly and Mulder indicated left onto M Street, heading towards the tiny Italian restaurant behind the Mongolian Embassy where they'd been infrequent visitors for the past few years. She watched the familiar sights of Georgetown pass them by as he made slow progress through the Sunday traffic. Old Stone Farmhouse; The Latham, where she'd broken up with Ethan just after joining the Bureau; the tiny head shop where she'd found a copy of Mulder's poster to send to the Sheriff in Danforth last year. Washington held so many memories for her; sometimes it felt like she had always been here.

"So, back to work tomorrow," Mulder observed casually, drumming his fingers on the steering wheel while they sat at a red light.

"Yeah."

"Looking forward to it?"

She looked at him out of the corner of her eye, and found his gaze trained steadily on the traffic lights, his jaw twitching as he sucked the salt off a sunflower seed. His apparent nonchalance was forced.

Scully considered his question. The work Kersh had them doing was mind-numbing and insulting. She hadn't spent twenty-two years in school to run background checks and verify fertilizer receipts. But it kept them in the Bureau, and if they just knuckled down she felt sure they would find a way to wrestle back the X-Files.

She knew Mulder had been worried she would quit out of frustration, even before New York; and afterwards, with one more scar added to her collection, she knew he was terrified she'd finally reached her end-point.

But while she certainly didn't relish the prospect of returning to domestic terrorism, the thing that really concerned her, was that they would lose this newfound closeness they'd shared since her injury. The subtle caresses, the chaste kisses, the playful flirting that had become a part of their daily routine, it was wonderful in its adolescent innocence. It was as if Mulder was wooing her, and though part of her was terrified about where it would lead, a larger part was more concerned about where it wouldn't.

The light changed to green and they moved forward, sandwiched between the car in front and the one behind. Scully realized she didn't really have a choice but to move forward either; her partnership with Mulder was one of the most important things in her life. She cherished him as a friend, and even if returning to work put an end to any fledgling romantic relationship, keeping Mulder as a friend and partner was more important.

She nodded slowly as he turned in behind the Embassy and pulled up out front of Tony's. "Yes, I am," she said at last, and he smiled in relief.

"Let's go eat."

***

FBI Headquarters, March 8th

The fluorescent light overhead flickered annoyingly as Mulder pulled the ear-defenders on and pushed through the soundproofed door into the firing range. The solid concrete walls of the large room were painted a sickly shade of green, the paint chipped and flaking from years of abuse. The muffled crack of gunfire sounded from several of the thirty booths and he scanned the long row until his eyes landed on the familiar outline of his partner.

He approached her slowly as she thrust a fresh clip into her P228 with the heel of her hand and thumbed a keypad to reset the target, sending it sailing back down the line. Her navy blazer was hanging at the end of the booth on a hook and her fitted shell clung to the rigid lines of her shoulder blades as she raised the weapon to take aim, cupping her left hand under her right to steady her arm.

She shifted her high-heeled feet on the polished concrete floor to widen her stance, skirt taut over neat hips; the empty leather holder clipped to her waist looked huge on her small frame, and it seemed strange to see her in 'FBI' garb after so long in casual clothes. Somehow she seemed taller. Three beeps signalled the start of the run and the target sailed smoothly towards her at 22mph. The defined muscles in her arms flinched as she pulled the trigger, her body recoiling minutely, but after the first shot her body compensated and she fired the remaining rounds like a statue. She'd emptied her clip before the target was halfway to the booth.

Mulder tugged his headset off and approached quietly from behind as she replaced the empty clip with a new one and holstered her weapon. The target sheet with its silhouetted perp swung to a stop by her head and she removed her ear and eye defenders, dropping them on the chipped wooden shelf beside her.

"What are you doing here, Mulder?" Scully asked without turning round and she leaned over the barrier to retrieve the target. She had to strain to reach and Mulder smiled, as much at her sixth-sense ability to detect him as the pleasing way her skirt hugged her ass as she stretched. Her pale grey top pulled up to reveal a sliver of ink on her lower back. Two months ago, he would have stuffed his hands in his pockets to quell the urge to reach out and touch, the refrain *not yours* echoing in his mind. But a lot had changed over the past weeks; enough gentle caresses and light kisses shared that he dared to brush his fingertips over the enticing patch of skin, and feel her shiver at his touch.

She barely glanced at the target before she looked up at Mulder, her cheeks flushed by his touch, and he grabbed the pock-marked paper from her and held it up with a whistle. "That's some fancy shootin' ya got there," he drawled, admiring the tiny cluster of holes around the left side of the chest, and the single, perfect circle in the middle of the head.

He peered down at her, admiring not for the first time, how much skill she crammed into such a small package. A faint twitch of her lips was the only hint that she'd heard, or appreciated, his compliment. "Don't you have some place else to be?" she prodded, taking the target off him.

"Actually, yes," Mulder admitted, as she slipped into her blazer, "And so do you." They made their way out of the range and Scully quirked her eyebrows questioningly. "Kersh wants us in a meeting," he clarified.

"Now?"

Mulder dumped their protective wear in a bin by the door. "From his assistant's tone, yesterday, I think."

***

Scully's eyes bounced off him apprehensively as Kersh's assistant ushered them into Kersh's office, and they took their usual seats in front of the Assistant Director's behemoth of a desk. In a third chair, to the side of Kersh, sat Assistant Director Cassidy, fading blonde hair styled expertly, falling just-so over the collar of her taupe suit jacket. To her right, a reed-thin man with a face that didn't see enough sunlight hovered on the edge of his chair like it was electrified. Mulder recognized him as the head of the ISU, appointed after Bill Patterson's demise.

"Agent Scully, good to see you back on your feet," Kersh said smoothly, guiltlessly, and Mulder wanted to reach across the desk and smack him.

"Thank you, Sir," she said without inflection, hands folded neatly in her lap, and it was hard to believe that just six weeks ago she'd been fighting for her life in a New York hospital.

Kersh slid a gold Mont Blanc into his shirt pocket and leaned back in his chair, causing the leather to creak. "Agents, this is SAC Alex Fielding, head of the ISU" Kersh said gesturing to the nervy man beside him. "And Assistant Director Cassidy, who leads the Investigations and Operations Support Directorate. I believe you already know the Assistant Director from her previous role at OPR."

Mulder looked at AD Cassidy and found her watching him carefully with cornflower blue eyes that soaked up every detail. There was something about her expression that made him feel uneasy and when he tipped his chin in acknowledgement, the hint of a smile graced the AD's attractive face.

"Assistant Director Cassidy asked for this meeting today," Kersh droned tonelessly, and the only hint that he felt wrong-footed was the sneering curl of his upper lip. "SAC Fielding has a case he requires support on and AD Cassidy feels that your skills are the best match."

"Yes, thank you for coming on such short notice," Cassidy said conversationally, grasping the verbal baton from Kersh, "I understand this is your first day back Agent Scully?"

"Yes Ma'am."

"You look well. Your injury was very serious, I hear," Cassidy pressed and Scully shifted in her chair, a feint flush of embarrassment pinking her cheeks as all eyes in the room focused on her.

"I'm fine," she said after an uncomfortable pause during which Cassidy watched her thoughtfully and Kersh looked like he was choking on a turd.

"Good," Cassidy concluded before gesturing for Fielding to hand out the files he held in his lap, "SAC Fielding, perhaps you can fill everyone in?"

"Yesterday evening Chicago PD attended a homicide in Lincoln Park. The victim was identified as twenty-five year old Kurt Michael Roberts, an accounts executive with United Insurance," Fielding explained in a thick New York accent as he passed them each a manila folder. Mulder flipped the file open and scanned the introductory cover sheet. The police had taken the call at 8.09pm from a dog walker who discovered Roberts lying on the sidewalk beside the entrance to the zoo; an ambulance had attended but he'd been declared dead at the scene. The Medical Examiner had estimated time of death within the previous four hours on the age-old rule of thumb that the body wasn't cold yet, but the autopsy itself had yet to be carried out, and cause of death was listed only as 'blood loss due to abdominal wound'.

Beside him, Scully thumbed through the report, digesting the sketchy facts quickly, and he looked up at the sound of her breath catching in her throat. The folder rustled in her hand as she brought it closer to her face to inspect the glossy 8x10 clipped to page five.

"Oh my God!" she murmured, frowning at the image before her, and Mulder quickly flipped to the image in his own report.

"Ouch," he muttered, raising his eyebrows at the stark photograph of Kurt Roberts lying on his back on the ground, a gaping hole where his torso used to be, revealing the blood-soaked concrete beneath him.

"What was the ME's preliminary comment on cause of death?" Scully asked, and Mulder could already sense her medical interest had been piqued.

"He couldn't even begin to speculate."

"There were no witnesses?" Scully prompted Fielding as she pored over the photograph.

"None. Chicago PD are analyzing the CCTV for that area, but nothing yet. Unfortunately, Roberts was standing in a black spot."

"No weapons found at the scene?"

Fielding shook his head and when Scully opened her mouth to ask another question, AD Cassidy took the opportunity to interject, "Mr. Roberts was the nephew of the States Attorney, who... encouraged... the local police force to invite the Bureau to lend a hand. We'd like you to travel there immediately to assist."

Mulder blinked in surprise, looking between the serene and seemingly open face of AD Cassidy and the chagrined grimace on Kersh's face. After months of scut work, it raised his suspicions to now be offered a homicide to investigate, and the words were out of his mouth before he could stop himself.

"Why us?"

He sensed the minute shift in Scully, a slight tensing in her shoulders as she silently willed him to tread carefully.

"Frankly that's the question on my mind," Kersh muttered, and beside him, Cassidy smiled hollowly.

"ISU are choked. You've been there yourself Agent Mulder, you know the caseload. And besides," she looked pointedly at Scully, "The forensic characteristics in this case are extremely complex. Agent Scully, I think you're uniquely qualified to best investigate this case. Agent Mulder, and his background in the ISU background will undoubtedly be of assistance."

Mulder smelled a rat. He narrowed his eyes as he looked between ADs Cassidy and Kersh. It was pretty clear from the barely concealed annoyance on Kersh's face that he'd had nothing to do with this allocation of resources, and Mulder struggled to see why Cassidy, who only a few months ago, had ripped him a new one and dismissed their work as lunacy, was now offering them an escape route from the tedium of background checks.

In the back of his mind, he was also still acutely conscious of what had happened just when Kersh had given Scully a chance on the Fellig case. But, he reminded himself, this time he would be with her. And it was a step up from piles of horseshit, whatever Cassidy's motivation.

He found Scully's eyes, and could see she shared his concerns, but a tilt of her eyebrow told him she would let him make the decision.

He turned back to AD Cassidy's expectant face.

"What's the name of our contact in the Chicago PD?"


	2. Chapter 2

Chicago PD, Area 3 Detective Division, March 8th

Detective Christopher Kryngold, a child of unthinking, irreligious parents, had been a prisoner to his name his whole life. Tormented as a child, teased as an adult, he'd been known throughout Chicago PD since his Academy days as 'Santa'. The only blessing was that he didn't have a white beard or a jelly belly, but with middle age approaching, and the stress and diet of a homicide detective, it was only a matter of time.

Accepting his fate, he bit heartily into a sugared donut while he thumbed stickily through the pages of a preliminary report into a drug-related shooting on the South Side on Friday night. Kryngold sighed and sucked the residual sugar from his fingers; if fucking Narcotics would just do their jobs, his own would be a lot easier. He had cases coming out of his ears: there'd been just over 700 murders in the city the previous year, almost half of which remained unsolved. At any one time, he had an open caseload of around 30 cases for which there was rarely an obvious suspect or sufficient forensic evidence to point them in the right direction, let alone be convincing enough to secure a conviction should they actually end up collaring the jumped-up little fuck who carried a knife bigger than his dick. Or a gun. Or a baseball bat. 

"Yo! Santa! You got visitors," bellowed Mikey Brennan, the admin officer who manned reception, and Kryngold wondered why the hell Mikey couldn't just pick up the phone like a regular person, instead of hollering across the entire open plan homicide office. 

He leaned back in his chair, wiping his fingers off on a Krispy Kreme napkin as he watched a man and woman wind their way through the desks towards him. He could tell from 20 yards away they were the Fibbies; it might as well have been stamped on their foreheads. People joked about 'Men in Black', but every FBI agent Kryngold had ever had the misfortune to meet had been the walking embodiment. Though to be fair, the petite woman approaching his desk had better legs than Tommy Lee Jones.

"Detective Kryngold? I'm Special Agent Dana Scully," the woman said, flashing her ID past his face and snapping it shut before he could focus on the picture. Her red hair was a slice of brightness in the dull office, and she gestured to the lanky fop beside her with her closed badge, "This is my partner Fox Mulder; I believe you're expecting us." 

Kryngold looked them up and down unenthusiastically, for it was the responsibility of the hard-working homicide detective to resent the input of the FBI, even when said FBI was both pleasing to the eye and taking a case off his already top-heavy workload. He let out a put-upon sigh and waved toward the two battered chairs before his desk.

"G'head, sit. You want coffee?" he offered, because he didn't really have it in him to be a total asshole. Today.

"No thanks, we had our fill of sludge on the flight over," Agent Mulder mumbled, though the feint twist of his mouth that Kryngold assumed was a smile lightened the sour comment.

"Yeah, well, there's battery acid less potent than our brew; you probably do right."

"Detective, can you bring us up to speed with the Roberts case? The information our AD gave us was very limited," Agent Scully asked as they settled into the creaky chairs. She crossed her legs towards her partner, and Kryngold noted that up close, they looked even less like Tommy Lee Jones'. She pulled a little notepad out of her breast pocket, the chairs she and her partner being so near one another that their elbows brushed with every movement. Very cozy.

Kryngold dug around in a stack of files on his desk, almost toppling the tower, and then turned to the pile on the floor by his chair, in search of the casefile. When he righted himself, a little red-faced after having been inverted over the side of his chair for so long, he caught the tail end of a look pass between the Agents.

Slapping the slim manila folder down on his cluttered desk, on the remnants of his donut, he adjusted his tie. "Sorry," he said unapologetically, "I guess when you only have one case it's hard to misplace it."

The agents just looked at him and he felt marginally embarrassed for his outburst, but Jesus, the fucking FBI always looked so goddamn in control. 

"Dispatch took the call from a passer-by at 8.09pm Sunday," he said gruffly, spreading the thin file out before him. "Park Security were on the scene within five minutes, the ambulance got there at 8.17pm and called-it. Chicago PD arrived shortly after, and my lucky number came up; I got there about nine and there was no doubt he was dead." No doubt at all. Kurt Roberts' internal organs were gone, obliterated, just a hole where his torso used to be; Kryngold had never seen anything like it.

"The passer-by checks out?" Agent Mulder asked and he gestured for Kryngold to give him the sheaf of crime scene photos. His genuine interest softened Kryngold's mood a little, or maybe it was just the carbs from the donut kicking in.

"Yeah, soccer mom, training for the marathon," he said, handing over the photos and digging his pen out from under the scrunched up napkin. He waggled it thoughtfully between his index and middle finger as he continued, "I spoke to Roberts' roommate last night. He said Roberts left for a run about 5.30pm, that he usually went to Lincoln Park and did a lap or two there. That ties in with the CCTV; I've got a couple of uniforms going over the tapes between his place and the park and we have him getting to the top of North Cannon at just before six. CCTV for the park itself is pretty patchy. Where it actually happened, he was thoughtful enough to stand behind a tree, so we didn't get it on tape."

"No witnesses have come forward?" Mulder probed, and Kryngold shook his head.

"The weather was pretty bad last night, would've kept a lot of people out of the park. Fortunately, the rain held off until we got him moved," he shook his head as he pictured Roberts' devastated body. "His torso was held together by a thread; it took six guys nearly an hour to get him in the body bag in one piece"

Mulder looked up from the grizzly photo in his hand, "What'd they use? A spatula?"

"Is the post-mortem scheduled?" Agent Scully asked, not cracking a smile, though he suspected she would be quite lovely if she did.

"Last I heard it was pushed back to tomorrow. They're a bit backed-up and these gang related murders tend to get a lower priority."

She blinked and frowned slightly. "You're treating this as gang-related?"

He waved at the stacks of files on his desk and floor, "Over half of these are gang related; another twenty percent: muggings, robberies gone wrong. He's a young guy, decent job, likes to party. Ten to one, he was looking to score some E or an eight-ball of blow, and it went down badly."

She held a photo up of Roberts splayed wide open on the ground, "Is this a typical murder scene for you, Detective?"

Kryngold sighed. "No," he conceded, "But I know this city, and convention says a murder like this has gangs involved."

"Perhaps," she said, and though she clearly disagreed, her tone was amicable. "But I can't think of a conventional weapon that could cause such isolated devastation."

"Could this be some kind of animal attack, Scully?" her partner interjected, and she looked at him, pursing her lips in thought.

"I don't think we can rule anything out until the autopsy's done, but Mulder, it would have to be an extremely powerful animal to do that to a man."

"There are documented cases where predatory animals like bears have ventured away from their familiar habitats into populated areas, and become aggressive when disturbed. A brown bear can weight well over a thousand pounds - I think it's fair to say it would pack quite a punch."

Scully ducked her chin, "Mulder, I think someone would've noticed if there was a bear wandering around Chicago -"

"I'm not saying it *was* a bear Scully, just that it's not like there's no precedent."

"Well if it wasn't a gang and it wasn't Yogi bear, what the hell was it?" Kryngold piped up and they both turned to look at him like they'd forgotten he was there.

Agent Scully stood up, re-pocketing her notebook and smoothing her skirt down over her shapely legs, "I'm going to the OCME to see about the autopsy. Thanks for your time Detective Kryngold."

"Anytime Agent Scully. We're always happy to help the FBI," he offered, tempering his facetious tone with a slight smile and she nodded goodbye to both he and Agent Mulder, and left them sitting at his overloaded desk.

"If she thinks she can get the Medical Examiner to move quicker, she's in for a surprise," he confessed, visualizing the diminutive agent coming up against Hal Barker, the Chief Medical Examiner, and one of the most cantankerous assholes he'd had ever met. He wouldn't mind being there to see it.

"Scully's a qualified forensic pathologist. I think things will move pretty quick when she gets involved."

"A lady of many talents," Kryngold observed, his tone conveying his appreciation for some of those talents. "Ok FBI, so where do you want to start?"

"If you can put me in touch with the patrol officer first on scene? And then I'm going to pay Kurt's roommate a visit."

"Sure, patrol control is right upstairs; Darren Newman was the guy on duty, he's in today," Kryngold said. Mulder nodded his thanks and rose to his feet, "'Santa'?" queried, almost as an afterthought, and Kryngold tapped his pencil on the nameplate on his desk. The Agent picked it up, considering and then a smile crossed his face. "Just as well you're not in vice anymore." 

Kryngold snorted. "Oh, I used to be. There just wasn't enough room for me and all the Ho's."

***

The Office of the Chief Medical Examiner for Chicago was housed in an ugly, utilitarian building in the Medical District, with a corrugated blue roof that ran almost to the ground on the north face and reminded Scully of an Ikea store. Inside, however, it was almost impossible to differentiate it from any other morgue she'd been in around the country, with seemingly endless miles of corridors sporting chipped pastel paint and putrid colored linoleum floor.

She was presently nearing the end of one of these unending hallways, clipping along at pace behind a Resident Pathologist who wore blood spackled scrubs and a pair of battered Nikes. The sole on the left sneaker was coming away from the shoe, and with every step, a slip- slap noise reverberated through the sterile hallway. Scully could remember being similarly dishevelled during her own residency, not through lack of money, but because the shifts blended into one another, and the last thing she'd wanted to do after a 36-hour stint was go shopping.

"We don't get too many like this, and we get our share of weird things here," the pathologist, an athletic guy in his mid-twenties named Matt, observed as he pushed open a swinging door into Autopsy Bay 7, although Scully suspected he'd probably never autopsied an elephant. 

"I appreciate you letting me take care of this," she said politely, scanning the bay to get her bearings. These rooms were always similar, sometimes the technology varied, and to be sure, she was used to the luxuries the labs in Quantico afforded her; but ultimately a Stryker saw was a Stryker saw, and whether she was dictating her findings in a room wired for sound, or chalking it up on a board, the end results were the same.

"Sure. I wouldn't have minded having a crack myself, but I got a full schedule as it is," Matt said amiably, moving over to the stainless-steel table in the center of the room. He lifted the sheet covering the feet and checked the toe-tag against the paperwork on his clip-board, and then passed the board to Scully. "Everything's set up for you," he indicated the tray of implements by the head of the table, "Just dial 4425 if you need anything. I'm sorry there's no diener to assist; we just don't have anyone spare."

"It's fine. Thank you," she said, actually a little relieved that someone wouldn't be peering over her shoulder. It was almost six o'clock on what was supposed to be her first day of desk duty, and yet here she was, 700 miles away from home and about to start an autopsy. Her doctor was going to be livid if he found out.

"No problem. Ladies locker room is down the hall to the right. Good luck!" Matt said, backing out of the room with a little wave.

Scully waited until the door swung shut and then peeled back the cotton sheet covering the body.

The photos had been graphic; full-color, crystal clear depictions of the massive chest wound Roberts had sustained, but Scully's mouth still dropped open when she saw it in the flesh. From the crest of the manubrium to the 12th or 13th vertebrae, Kurt Roberts was just.. gone. A couple of inches of muscle and fatty tissue remained down the former curves of his waist, tenuously connecting his the top of his chest to his hips, and Scully wondered how the hell they *had* managed to get him in the body bag in one piece.

She leaned over to inspect the torn edges of the wound, which were surrounded by a continuous rim of violently abraded skin. It was as though he'd been hit by a single, tremendous force. There was no stippling or powder tattooing to indicate a gunshot wound, and in any case, there was no conventional gun Scully was aware of that would cause something on this scale.

Pulling the overhead magnifier down, she peered into the wound itself, finding the remaining tissue shredded, and peppered with fragments of bone. As far as she could see, all of the major organs were gone, leaving only the top of the oesophagus and the lower section of the small colon. Though someone had already taken care of removing trace evidence from the outer body, it would take hours of painstaking work to remove each fragment of bone and try to piece together what might have happened to Mr. Roberts. It was little wonder no one in the OCME had found time to do the autopsy yet, and Scully sighed as the muscles in her stomach, barely recovered, protested the long day she'd already had, and the long night that was now ahead of her.

'Welcome back,' she wished herself as she shrugged out of her blazer and prepared to get started.

***

Straight off the back of a fruitless conversation with the patrolman who'd been first on the scene the previous night, Mulder banged on the door to Kurt Roberts' apartment with the palm of his hand. He looked around the dingy corridor while he waited for someone to answer. The hallway, the building even, was not dissimilar from the post-war redbrick he lived in himself, even sharing the same, musty smell.

A tired looking man with mussed blonde hair and a Bears t-shirt opened the door, and Mulder flashed his badge.

"Daniel Lindsay?" he queried, and the young man's eyes widened as he nodded. "I'm Special Agent Mulder with the FBI. Can I talk to you about Kurt?"

"Uh, yeah, sure. Come in," he said, opening the door fully to let Mulder into an open plan kitchen and living room area.

"You want a drink?" Daniel asked, picking up a half- finished bottle of Miller and shifting uncomfortably in his socked feet as Mulder looked around the room. It was dimly lit by a single lamp and some under-cabinet lighting in the kitchen area, and though a little messy, with some unfolded laundry dumped in a pile on the counter, it was reasonably well kept for two single guys in their twenties.

"No thanks."

"So uh, the FBI is investigating what happened to Kurt?"

"We're just helping Chicago PD out. I have a few questions for you about last night. Kurt left here around 5.30pm, right?"

"Yeah, yeah. He went running."

"He go running often?" Mulder asked, pausing in front of the refrigerator to study the photographs tacked to it. He could pick out Kurt in a number of them, putting the finishing touches to some mud wall in Africa, waving a medal in the air after a race, hamming it up for the camera at a party. At several parties actually; it seemed to be a running theme. 

"Um yeah, he runs like every day," Daniel blinked at his mistake, and swallowed a lump in his throat before correcting himself, "He *ran* every day; he did the Chicago marathon 4 times."

Mulder looked at him sympathetically, "How long had you know him?"

"Since freshmen year at college. We rushed for Kappa Sig at the same time and just kind of bonded. He was a great guy. He, uh, he was a good friend to me," he said, voice cracking, and he turned away from Mulder and walked into the living room.

"Has Kurt ever been in any kind of trouble?" Mulder asked, following Daniel into the living room and sitting the sofa opposite him.

"No," the younger man answered, and his eyes shone with tears as he picked absently at the label on his bottle. 

"No money worries? Problems at work?"

"No. I don't know. I don't think so," he answered, running a hand through his hair. "I mean he's from a pretty well- off family, I don't think money was ever a problem for him."

"You guys party a lot?"

Daniel looked at him a little strangely, unsure where the question was leading, "I guess. I mean, less than when we were at college, but you know, at the weekends we go out with the guys sometimes."

"Did Kurt like to get high?" Mulder asked casually, and Daniel balked, his cheeks flushing lightly.

Mulder smiled slightly, leaning back to rest his bent arm on the back of the sofa and opening his body to Daniel in a show of open-minded tolerance, "Look, I'm not as old as I look. I get it: young guy, good job; a line of coke after he won a new account at work, or some E in a club. I'm not trying to trip you up Daniel, I just want to find out what happened to Kurt."

Daniel considered for a moment, finally admitting, "Occasionally some weed; I saw him do coke once in college, but he.. Kurt wasn't really that kind of guy. I mean, he was pretty level headed."

Mulder nodded thoughtfully. What Scully would find in her autopsy remained to be seen, but from what he'd learned about Kurt so far, he had trouble subscribing to Detective Kryngold's drug-buy-gone-wrong theory, and something about the idea of Kurt having just been in the wrong place at the wrong time, didn't sit right either. He needed to get a look at what little footage there was of Kurt in Lincoln Park before he was attacked; maybe something would stand out, because so far, nothing Daniel had said had given him any new leads. Mulder glanced at the clock on the wall behind Daniel, finding it was almost eight; which left him enough time to swing by the CCTV control room before he collected Scully from the morgue.

"Can I take a look at his room?" Mulder asked, and Daniel led him down a short hallway to Kurt's bedroom, lingering in the doorway as Mulder entered and slowly scanned the room.

The shades were angled up, directing the light from the street below onto the beige painted wall in narrow stripes until Mulder reached over and flipped on the desk lamp, obliterating them. Kurt's room was like the rest of the apartment. Reasonably clean and tidy, a king-sized bed dominated the small room, leaving only enough space for a small desk and the bureau. A Moleskin book lay on the desk, and as he reached to pick it up, a splash of light in the trash-can caught his eye: a Trojan wrapper, crumpled in amongst some discarded paper. Mulder flipped through the notebook, finding it a quarter-full with notes about clients and a half-decent pencil doodle of Kate Winslet in her Titanic pose, complete with carbon- augmented breasts. He rotated the book for a better look before snapping it shut and glancing over his shoulder to Daniel.

"Was Kurt seeing someone?"

"He broke up with his girlfriend about three months ago."

"No one since then?" Mulder prompted, switching off the lamp and crossing the room toward the door.

Daniel paused, his eyes sad as he looked around his friend's room. "We went out with a group of friends on Saturday night; he left the club with a girl."

"Did you meet her?"

"No. I don't know if they came back here, but she wasn't here in the morning. Kurt didn't mention anything about it."

"What was the name of the club?"

"Espionage," Daniel said, following Mulder back towards the front door. "Are you gonna find the guy who did this to Kurt?" he asked.

Mulder looked at the young man, angry eyes dark against his grief-grey face and Mulder knew all too well the feelings of helplessness and frustration that Daniel was experiencing. "I'm going to do everything I can," he said after a beat, because it was all he could say. And yet it was never enough.

***

"Hey!"

Scully blinked, looking up from the report she had been staring at in a semi-trance. Swivelling on her stool, her eyes slowly came into focus on Mulder, as he lingered in the door to the autopsy bay. He looked tired, his hair spikey from having his hand dragged through it too many times, but he smiled when she looked at him.

She scrubbing a hand over her face and tried to look less exhausted that she felt. "Hi," she responded, her voice scratchy from the dry, re-circulated air in the morgue.

"You looked like you were asleep sitting up," he said, coming fully into the room to stand beside her, and forcing her to tilt her head back to see him. 

"Hmm, I think maybe I was," she admitted and Mulder looked concerned, reaching out to place a warm hand on the back on her neck. He rubbed his thumb along the tense column of her throat.

"How are you feeling? This isn't exactly the slow and easy return to work you were supposed to have."

Scully found herself leaning into his touch. She was so tired she could barely keep her eyes open, and the muscles in her stomach ached from being stooped over an autopsy table for hours. Yesterday, when she'd been imagining her return to work she had felt more than ready, but right now, fatigued and sore, she wasn't so sure. She just wanted to lean her head against Mulder's chest and close her eyes, but when she looked up to his face, she found him watching her expectantly. 

"Scully?" he prompted, increasingly concerned and she shook her head.

"I'm ok," she mumbled at last, forcing herself to slide off the stool onto unsteady feet. She stood for a minute to get her balance, "Just tired."

His fingers squeezed her shoulder, "C'mon, let's get you to the hotel." He grabbed her blazer off the counter and helped her into it, and even in her drained and disconnected state, she realized it was the first time he'd ever done that. "You're in luck, Cassidy's secretary books better hotels than I do," he continued, placing a hand on her back and leading her out the door, "We're only 5 minutes down the road."

They made their way through the myriad of corridors, out into the frigid night air on West Harrison, the bite in the air rousing Scully enough to last the short journey to the hotel. The street was quiet, but the hum of traffic carried from the Expressway, just a block over as they slid into the rental, still warm from Mulder's previous journey.

In thankfully short order, they were making their way through the hotel lobby, Mulder's hand having migrated from her back to her hip now that they were out of a professional setting, his firm grip providing support as they rode the elevator to the ninth floor.

In her room at last, a bed had scarcely looked so appealing. Mulder had brought her bag up from the car and in the light from the window, she rooted through it until she found her pyjamas before stumbling into the bathroom to change. 

When she came back Mulder was still standing in his trench by the television, looking a little awkward as she tugged back the down comforter and slid between the cool sheets. Muscles all over her body ached pleasurably, like a wrist bent the wrong way and then returned to normal, and she could feel the tug of sleep pulling at her awareness.

"I, uh, I’ll see you in the morning," Mulder mumbled, and he was almost at the door before she found her voice.

"Stay." she said quietly as her eyes drifted shut, and he froze with his hand on the doorknob.

"What?" he asked, and even though she was almost asleep, she could hear the anxious hope in his voice. 

"Will you stay?" she whispered, forcing her reluctant mouth to form the words. "Please."

She heard the rustle of his coat and she dared not open her eyes lest she have to watch him go. And then she heard the slither of his tie sliding from his collar and the whisper of other clothes being shed. Her pulse hammered even as she slipped closer to sleep.

The bed dipped as he lay down beside her. "You don’t have to say please," he whispered, pressing a kiss against her hairline, and she smiled. 

Just as sleep claimed her, she slid her hand across the cool white sheet between them, and felt the warmth of Mulder's fingers as he laced them with hers.


	3. Chapter 3

Holiday Inn Downtown Chicago, March 9th

Muted orange streaks of light shone through the open blinds, painting the wall above the desk and highlighting the layer of dust on the television screen. Double-glazed windows muffled the rumbling rush hour traffic and Scully blinked her eyes open slowly, feeling the last vestiges of sleep trickle from her body. From the corner of the room, where the tastelessly upholstered Queen Anne chair sat, she heard Mulder's hushed voice.

"Yes... Yes, Ma'am. I'll tell her." 

She heard the faint plastic 'click' of his cell being disconnected, and then a shuffle of fabric as he rose and began pulling his clothes on.

"Who was that?" she croaked, rising slowly on an elbow, and he came to stand by the bed.

"AD Cassidy. She wanted a status update... and to see how you were."

She pushed herself into a sitting position and cleared her throat, "How much progress did she think we'd make in less than twenty-four hours?" 

"I get the impression the State's Attorney is keeping up the pressure," he said, sitting down on the edge of the bed so that his back was to the window. The early morning sunlight shone around him like a halo. "He wants to meet with us later today; Cassidy said we should tread carefully."

Scully huffed a breath at the prospect of dealing with the politics and ran her hands through her hair where she could feel it stuck to the side of her head in a rat's nest-like clump. "What time is it?" 

"About 7.15am. I didn't mean to wake you," Mulder said, his gaze fixed on the sliver of her abdomen bared as she tried to bring order to her hair. He looked away sharply and it was hard to tell in the peachy light of the sunrise, but she thought he might be blushing. She dropped her hands to the starched white duvet covering her lap and picked at a loose thread with her fingernail.

"How did it go with Detective Kryngold last night?" she asked, because if she didn't start thinking about work, she would be thinking about the way his t-shirt hugged the taut line of his chest or how gentle his grip had been when he held her hand last night.

"'Santa'?" he said, sounding glad to talk about work too. "He's fine. Mostly I think he's just glad to have one less case to worry about. I met the patrolman who was first on scene; he didn't really tell me anything we didn't already know. I did have an interesting chat with Roberts' roommate though."

"How so?"

"Well for one, he confirmed what we pretty much knew: Roberts' wasn't a drug-user, so I think we can truly discount that this was a buy-gone-wrong. But he also said that Roberts' hooked up with a girl in a club Saturday night -"

Scully raised her eyebrows, "Well that makes sense," she said thoughtfully, and at Mulder's enquiring look she clarified, "Mr. Roberts had scratches on his shoulder blades that looked to have been caused by fingernails. And he'd suffered some other... abrasions prior to his death."

"Abrasions?" he asked and at her pointed look, he pulled a discomforted face. "This was a sign of assault..?"

Scully shook her head, and for the first time she felt uncomfortable talking about such a topic with Mulder. It was ridiculous, she chided herself, not to mention adolescent, to be embarrassed about discussing sex in the context of the case. They were both grown-ups and they'd both had it themselves, even if it was so long ago she worried she'd forgotten how. "I don't believe so, there were no other injuries in the area, no bruising anywhere else, I think he'd just been a little... over exuberant."

"Ok, well, I think we need to find the lucky lady."

"You don't know who she is?"

"The roommate didn't meet her, but we can check out the club this morning. Someone might remember something," he said and leaned over to run the tip of his index finger along the back of her hand. "What about you? How did the autopsy go?"

"Uh, it was -" she swallowed on a suddenly dry mouth and strained to remember the autopsy she'd spent the better part of six hours doing the night before. Mentally, she tried to shake some sense into herself. Since when did she get so worked up by a single touch? Mulder had always touched her, gotten in her personal space, pushed her to the edge of her limits. 

And yet. 

And yet, she had never sat in bed with him discussing a case. And there was no denying that somewhere along the way, his touches had morphed into caresses. The guiding touch on her back was now a splayed hand on her hip as he supported her in a hotel lobby, the brush of a lock of hair from her eyes was accompanied by a thumb smoothing over her lower lip. Things were changing between then, had been for a long time. But right now there was a case to solve, and whatever it was that was happening to their relationship, work would always come first.

"Roberts exsanguinated," she said at last, clearing her throat and falling back on the familiar cushion of her medical knowledge. "He was hit by a single extremely powerful blunt object, probably something not much bigger than my hand," she said gesturing with her right hand, palm up, and each word smoothed her nerves until it was like every other time she'd explained a cause of death to him. "It left him with a hole in his abdomen about 12 inches across. You know the saying 'it knocked his socks off'? That's pretty much what happened here. Whatever hit Roberts was violent enough to punch right through his chest cavity and spatter shattered bone and organ tissue over fifteen feet on the ground behind him, while he literally just dropped where he had been standing."

"Jesus," Mulder muttered, "Have you ever heard of anything like that?"

"No. The kind of force we're talking about here would be thousands of pounds per square inch, and the speed - I'd need to run tests in a ballistics lab to try to figure it out, but I'm not aware of any weapon which could do this."

Mulder stood up, his expression thoughtful, and he hooked his tie around his neck, leaving it untied. "I went to the CCTV control room last night to look at the footage from the park. Kryngold was right: it was a waste of time. Roberts stopped to stretch, and it seemed like he could see someone he recognized - then he stepped beyond the reach of the camera. The attack wasn't visible at all."

"You should go check out the scene this morning," she said, climbing out of bed and reaching for her suitcase. "I need to go back to the OCME to finish up my report and get the samples sent to Quantico. I could meet the State's Attorney after that."

"Ok," he agreed shrugging into his suit jacket, like it was perfectly natural to be getting dressed in the previous night's clothes in her hotel room. "I'm gonna grab a shower and then I'll drop you off on the way."

He opened the door to leave and then turned back as he was halfway out, tapping the beech veneer with his index finger.

Scully looked up, "What?"

"You look pretty in the morning," he said softly, uncertainly, and she snapped her mouth shut, hands clutching the ice-blue blouse she'd picked out. His fingers drummed on the door again and it seemed impossibly loud to Scully's ears. "I'll see you downstairs in half an hour?"

"Ok," she murmured, and he offered up a small smile before closing the door behind him with a firm click.

When Scully finally looked down, she found her shirt crumpled in her hands. Torn between a smile and a sigh, she hoped there was an iron in the closet.

***

Lincoln Park Chicago

If spring was on the way, Mulder found no evidence of it in Lincoln Park. He drained the dregs from the cup of rapidly cooling coffee he'd bought from a vendor up by the boat club, and tossed it in the trashcan as he neared the location where Kurt Roberts had met his end.

Eyeing the wrought iron benches that lined the sidewalk, and the weighty branches of the barren trees, he estimated the spot where Roberts had lay dead. The pale grey concrete sidewalk was pristine once again, no sign of the blood and matter which had coated it, slick and red, on Sunday night. Mulder dug his hands in his coat pockets as he watched a young mother pushing a stroller over the unmarked slabs, carefree and chattering to her baby, no inkling about what she was walking over. Sometimes the obliviousness of humankind to the horrors of the world frustrated Mulder. That people were so ignorant of the dangers around them, and the tenuousness of the safety which they enjoyed and took for granted, angered him. But more often than that, he was just grateful that a relative few people had any notion of just what a horrible place the world could be.

The park was quiet really, only a few mothers with strollers and a couple of runners picking their way along the tree-lined path. It had been quieter still the night Roberts died, and Mulder scanned the lampposts and walls around him, identifying the CCTV camera which had failed to provide any useful footage.

"Can I help you, Sir?" 

Mulder looked over toward the entrance to the Zoo, and an approaching security guard. He was a black man, taller than Mulder, bundled in a sheepskin lined leather jacket and with a radio squawking from his belt. Small round silver framed glasses perched on the end of his nose though his tone was authoritative, his face was kind. 

Mulder pulled his ID out of his pocket. "I'm Agent Mulder, with the FBI."

The security guard relaxed, smiling as he pushed his glasses back up his nose and extended his hand, "I'm Peter West."

Mulder shook the man's hand and tucked his ID back in his pocket. "You know there was a murder here the other night?"

"Sure do. Damn horrible from what I heard. Environmental Health were still scrubbing the sidewalk the next morning."

"You were working that night?"

"Yeah, but not on this gate. The Zoo was closed; four guards patrol round, but nobody was over here when it happened."

Mulder sighed and looked past the guard to the open gates and the tall walls surround the Zoo.

"I heard he had no middle left, that it was splattered all over the sidewalk like he'd been hit by a cannon," West said conversationally, "That true?"

"It was a violent death," Mulder agreed squinting at the peaked roof of the cages protruding above the wall. "What's in those cages?" he asked, pointing.

West turned to look, "That's the monkeys."

"They got cameras in those cages?"

"I believe they do," the guard said, nodding as he followed Mulder's train of thought. "I don't know if it would cover anything that happened out here, but sure is worth a look."

"I think so," Mulder agreed following him back towards the entrance to the Zoo.

***

Espionage North Astor Street, Chicago

"I'm sorry I don't recognize him," the club manager, a slick-looking guy in his early thirties said, sounding genuinely apologetic. "You can try to come back later and check with the door staff, but to be honest we were rammed on Saturday night, I don't think you'll have much luck."

Mulder sighed and re-pocketed the photograph of Kurt Roberts. "How long have you been open?" he asked, looking around the darkened interior of the nightclub. A circular black marble bar dominated the center of the space, surrounding a circular column of glass shelving, which was lit by white light and held every drink imaginable. The area around the bar was peppered with tall tables, and a dance floor, occupied a large space to the rear. Around the edges of the room, leather booths, curved like horseshoes and shielded by lush purple curtains, offered some privacy to the VIP guests. It was fashionable and chic, and the kind of place Mulder had not frequented since, Jesus, since the late eighties. Could that be true? He did some mental math and lamented his lost youth. "Only two weeks, but business has been fantastic."

"You have CCTV?" Mulder asked, hoping that if they did it would show a little more than the blurred shadow of whoever had killed Roberts, like the disappointing footage captured by the monkey-cam.

"Sorry. We have a system but we've had some teething problems with it and it wasn't recording over the weekend."

Mulder's cell phone trilled in his pocket and he made an apologetic face, stepping away to answer it, "Mulder."

"Mulder, it's me. How are you getting on?"

"I'm remembering that murder investigations are only slightly less tedious than background checks on pig farmers."

A soft snort of a stifled giggle echoed on the line and he pictured the look of surprise on her face that morning when he'd told her she was pretty. Maybe he was going about this cock-eyed; maybe guys didn't usually wait six years to tell a woman she was pretty, but he felt sure that if he had done it sooner, it would've been the wrong time. And everything about he and Scully was about timing.

"No luck?" she asked, focusing his attention again.

"There was a camera in the monkey cage in the Zoo that appeared to showed the killer, but it was so blurry Roberts may as well have been attacked by the Blob. I got a copy anyway; I'll take it to the Field Office and see if someone in Sci-Crimes can clean it up any."

"It's something," she said and there was some commotion and the distorted sound of something profane being uttered in Urdu.

"Where are you?" Mulder asked frowning.

"I'm in a cab on my way to the State's Attorney," she said, adding in a lower voice, "I'm not sure the driver has a license."

"I'm not sure it would make a difference if he did," he retorted, recalling the kamikaze style of driving he'd witnessed during a vacation in Bombay when he was in college. "Did you finish your report?" he asked, watching the club manager take an inventory of the wine cooler.

"Yes. Although, I'm afraid my findings were somewhat inconclusive. I don't know what caused the injury Mr. Roberts suffered. I'm wondering if it might be some kind of experimental weapon."

"I don't know, Scully," Mulder said shaking his head. "The videotape I got this morning was blurry, but it didn't look like the killer was carrying anything."

He could hear the sound of Scully exhaling through her nose in frustration. "Let's see what Sci-Crimes can do to that tape."

"Ok. I'll see you at the hotel later," he said, concluding the call and disconnecting the line without saying goodbye. He slid the phone into his pocket and moved back over to the bar.

The manager looked up, pen clamped between his teeth and an especially nice bottle of white in his hand.

Mulder drummed his fingers on the polished bar. "What time do you open tonight?"

***

Cook County State's Attorney Office West Washington Street

Scully glanced surreptitiously at her watch, discretely adjusting the two-tone bracelet so she could see the face without moving again. It was almost 3pm and she'd been sitting in the State's Attorney's waiting room for almost forty-five minutes. If he was so damn intent on having his nephew's killer caught, she thought, he might consider letting her get on with investigating it.

Given the time to sit, she had spent most of the time working through what they knew of the case so far. It was a frustrating reality, particularly for a forensic pathologist, that most cases were solved not because of physical evidence but because of witnesses and confessions. Physical evidence was rarely present or effective in real world homicides, and when it was found, more often than not it was only enough to tie an already identified suspect to a crime, not identify him in and of itself. In this case though, they had neither witnesses nor evidence, and short of Sci-Crimes miraculously transforming a sow's ear of a CCTV tape into a silk purse of a mug-shot, they really had very little to go on.

Unfortunately, she didn't think the State's Attorney would be too pleased to hear this, not since he was apparently anxious enough to see the case solved that he'd circumvented the Chicago PD to call in the FBI within twelve hours. And for some, unknown reason, AD Cassidy had seen fit to assign her and Mulder. It just didn't make sense; the AD seemed, in fairness, to be a reasonable woman. The previous summer, whilst she had clearly found Scully's account of events hard to believe, Cassidy had treated her with a respect Scully's current AD had never displayed. But it still made no sense, and not having all the facts always left Scully feeling uneasy.

"The State's Attorney will see you now," said the secretary, a plump young woman, oozing out of a shift dress.

Scully snapped to attention, rising to her feet. "Thank you," she murmured, following the woman into a dark- panelled office with shelves and shelves of law books lining the walls.

The State's Attorney rose to meet her, stepping around a large and ornate desk to shake her hand. As the head of the second-largest prosecutor's office in the United States, Jim Roberts was a face she recognized from the news, but in person he was an attractive man in his early fifties, brown hair salted with grey in a way that made him look experienced and dependable. The sleeves of his white dress shirt were rolled to the elbows and his tie was loosened at the neck, giving him a more relaxed appearance than she recalled ever seeing on the television.

"Agent Scully. I'm so grateful that you're here," he said grasping her hand firmly in both of his and then gesturing to one of the leather armchairs around a coffee table to the left of his large office. "Can I get you anything to drink?"

"No thank you, Sir," she said, sitting on the edge of one of the burgundy Chesterfield chairs. 

Roberts nodded and waited until the secretary had closed the door. "I'm sorry I kept you waiting; I was on a conference call with the Governor." He fetched himself a bottle of water from a concealed refrigerator in the wall unit and came to sit in the chair at right angles to hers. "I do realize you have more important things to do than sit around waiting for me," he said with a self-deprecating smile and she felt herself revising the negative opinion she had been forming for the past hour.

"May I ask why you involved the FBI, Sir?"

Roberts leaned back in his chair, adjusting the loose knot in his tie, "Chicago PD are some of the finest officers in the country. But I'm not going to pretend that our city doesn't have its problems. We have our trouble with gangs, with drugs, and it ties up more and more of our officers' time every year. Sixty percent of murders remain unsolved here..." he said sighing and running a hand through his wavy hair. "Kurt was my sister's boy," he explained, "He was a good kid, and I couldn't let him just end up another number."

Scully didn't say anything, but he must have seen something in her face because his tan complexion gave away a light flush and he glanced away. "I know it's an betrayal of my position, but I had to do something." Roberts cocked his head, "He said you would understand."

Scully swallowed the anxious lump that rose suddenly rose in her throat. "Who said I would understand?" The State's Attorney looked at her strangely, obviously confused by her lack of knowledge. "Walter," he said, "Walter Skinner. I've known him since college; I called him on Sunday night and asked for his help. He said that you and your partner understood that sometimes you had to bend the rules."

Scully tried to cover her surprise but she couldn't stop her eyebrows from bouncing off her hairline at this unexpected news. "I see," she said, though in reality she was struggling to get her head around this development. Skinner had wanted them on this case? Was it an X-File and they just hadn't realized it yet?

Roberts looked uncomfortable, "I'm sorry, I feel I've spoken out of turn."

"No, no. I'm sorry, Sir. It's just the assignment came through a different chain of command. I wasn't unaware of Assistant Director Skinner's connection," she explained hastily, "My partner and I want to help in any way we can."

"Can you tell me what you've found so far?" he asked, relaxing slightly, and she brought him up to speed on the limited findings of their investigation thus far. Despite the fact that their progress had been limited, Roberts seemed pacified just by their presence in the city.

"Did Kurt suffer? When it happened?" he asked.

"I'm certain he didn't," she said gently, and though she rarely admitted to a family member that their loved one had suffered, on this occasion she was sure it was true. Kurt Roberts was dead before he hit the ground.

"Good. That's good," the State's Attorney said, clearly comforted. He rose to his feet, signalling the meeting was near its end. "Are you getting what you need from the Police Department?"

She thought of Kryngold and the gruff demeanor, which hid a conscientious and genuinely caring officer. "Yes, Sir."

"Who's the Detective?"

"Detective Kryngold. He's been very helpful."

Roberts smiled. "Santa's one of the good guys. I'm sure he'll do whatever he can - but if you need anything, please call me."

On the busy street below, she scanned the traffic for a cab, waving her hand in the air when she spotted one approaching. It was only a twenty-minute walk back to the hotel, and normally she would've relished the chance to get some fresh air and exercise. But she was finding herself easily tired, despite the time she had spent recuperating at home, and it was with some relief that she slid onto the sticky pleather rear seat and gave the driver the name of the hotel.

She let her head fall back against the headrest, closing her eyes as the cab moved off with a jolt. From her pocket, her phone sang and she dug the offending item out and held it to her ear without opening her eyes. "Scully."

"It's me," Mulder's voice rumbled down the line. "Sci- Crimes have sent the tape to Quantico for a better analysis but it looks like our killer is a woman."

Scully's eyes snapped open. "A woman?"

"Yeah. I think we need to find the woman he met in the club on Saturday. She could be the key."

"You didn't have any luck at the club?"

"No. But the doorman will be on duty tonight," there was a pause before he added, "And I don't know, Scully, I've got a feeling about that place. What if it was the girl Roberts met there? What if that's where she goes trolling for victims."

"Mulder, that's a hell of a leap. For one, I don't know how a woman could be responsible for Roberts death, not without a weapon. And what do you mean 'victims' - there's only been one."

"So far. I just feel like there's more to this case that we realize."

"Well you might be right there," she mumbled.

"What do you mean?"

"I just met the State's Attorney. His contact in the FBI - it wasn't Cassidy. It was Skinner."

"Skinner?" Mulder said, his dull voice registering a shade of intrigue. 

"I know he's not our superior anymore Mulder, but when you were in Bermuda... without him, I never would have found you. Maybe he's looking out for us."

Mulder hummed thoughtfully, "Or he believes there's more to this case."

"An X-File?" she asked, vocalizing the suspicion she herself had considered earlier.

"Yes."

"But why would he give it to us, Mulder? There are other agents assigned to the X-Files now," she said, not particularly enjoying the reminder.

"Maybe he wants to see it actually solved," Mulder said sharply, and it was the first time he'd ever cast any doubt, even tacitly, on Agent Fowley's competence or desire to pursue the truth. 

Scully herself had many doubts, but she wasn't going to touch that one with a barge pole and so she held her tongue.

"I still think the club warrants more investigation. I think we should go like regular patrons, see if anything stands out."

"You want to go to the club? Tonight?" she said barely concealing her surprise, and Mulder's silence answered her question. "But I don't have anything to wear," she stuttered.

"You've got a couple of hours; go shopping."

"Mulder! We're on a case!" she said in a high-pitched voice. She could almost hear him smiling down the phone.

"It's *for* the case. Cassidy said you should take it easy anyway."

"What?"

"On the phone this morning. Look, we don't have to stay for long, but I do have a feeling about this place. I want to check it out first hand."

"Ok," she murmured weakly, seeing the hotel looming a block over. Mulder disconnected the call and the dial tone buzzed repetitively in her ear. She leaned forward to the perforated holes in the Perspex between herself and the driver. "Can you take me to Nordstrom instead please?"

The driver, happy to ferry her around the city all day as long as she paid, waved his acknowledgement and pulled an illegal U-turn, knocking her back in her seat as he accelerated uptown.

Scully sighed and shoved her cell back in her pocket. If this was for the case, maybe she could get away with expensing a new outfit.


	4. Chapter 4

Espionage North Astor Street, Chicago

Mulder fingered the rim of the sweaty Collins glass containing the remaining inch of his second Jack and Coke of the evening, and cast his eyes over the crowded club. Had clubs always been this busy on a Tuesday? Sure it had been a while, but the only time he could remember partying indiscriminately throughout the week, he'd been at college. Judging by the expensively attired crowd in Espionage, and the price of drinks, this place wasn't exactly aimed at the student market. 

He'd arrived almost an hour ago, at nine thirty, after a strange call from Scully where she'd told him to go on ahead and she'd meet him there. From her flustered tone, he almost wondered if she was in some kind of girly flap about what she should wear. When he'd teasingly suggested as much, she'd slapped on an imperious tone and informed him she had paperwork to finish, and she'd be there as soon as she could. So he'd jumped in the shower, pulled on a pair of black slacks from his clean suit and a dark blue shirt that looked dressy enough to wear to a club and headed on over alone.

He'd checked with the doorman as he entered the club, being unsurprised when neither he nor the hostess recognized Roberts from his photo. This case was turning into a bit of a ball-ache, compounded by the fact that he now had the added concern that there was something he was missing. 

Other than the help he'd given Scully in November, they'd had nothing to do with Skinner since they'd been reassigned the previous summer. Once or twice, Mulder had passed him in the corridor and they'd exchanged polite nods, but that was it - and from what Scully had told him after the whole Queen Anne thing, Skinner had been pretty pissed off she'd asked for help, claiming his hands were tied. 

And if he was fair, Mulder could see that it was true. Skinner had gone out on a limb for them more than once, and even Mulder could see said limb was beginning to splinter. Which made Mulder think that there must be something very serious he was missing with this case for Skinner to have stuck his neck out and got them assigned.

"Can I get you a drink?" asked a smoky voice to his left, interrupting his thoughts, and he turned around to find an attractive woman smouldering against the bar next to him. She was petite, probably not a lot bigger than Scully, with dark blond hair curving around a well-structured face in a gentle wave. In the darkened bar, with a squint and a few more drinks under his belt, he could have fooled himself into thinking that it was Scully. But the days when he would've played that game were gone. He had the real thing now, or at least, he was working towards it, and a substitute would no longer cut the mustard. 

Mulder ducked his head a little, because at the end of the day she was still extremely attractive and, unfortunately, things like this didn't happen to him every day. "I think that's my line," he said, and encouraged, she slunk a little closer. "But, ah, I'm waiting for someone, so no. Thank you."

"That's unfortunate," she said, reaching out to trace the knuckles of his right hand where he clasped his drink. A jolt of static sliced through him at her touch and he jumped involuntarily, splashing a drop of his drink on the bar. Mulder swallowed uncomfortably, unused to a woman making such an obvious and bold play for him, and yet finding himself vaguely turned on by it at the same time. "That's very... unfortunate," she drawled seductively, before dipping her middle finger into his drink and raising the wet digit to her mouth, sucking off the bourbon in a way that made sweat bead on the back of Mulder's neck. She shot him one last tantalizing look, and then sashayed off to prey on some other unsuspecting schmuck. 

Stupefied, Mulder looked down at his drink, and then back up as she disappeared into the crowd. Jesus, why had shit like this never happened to him before? Blinking some moisture back into his eyes, he signalled to the bartender for another drink, just as a cool hand closed over his shoulder. He would've been afraid to turn around had he not already been able to smell the familiar scent of her perfume.

He swivelled his stool to find Scully standing next to him, her coat draped over her arm and a faint smile playing on her face. 

"Scully," he breathed, wondering if his face gave away his appreciation of her outfit. She wore a sleeveless shift dress in a silky dark-grey fabric that fell to just below her knee and V-ed between her breasts. The fabric slid over her slender frame and when she turned to deposit her coat on the chair beside her, he saw that the dress was cut in a deep V at the back too, baring an expanse of flawless cream skin, and confirming his suspicion that she was braless.

"Hi," she said, smiling almost shyly, and Mulder couldn't help making a mental comparison with the siren who'd just been pawing at him. Scully was worth a hundred women like that. She was worth everything.

"You found a dress then?" he remarked as she hooked the heel of a charcoal pump around the footrest and slid onto the stool next to his, crossing her silk-sheathed legs so that her knees sat between his splayed legs. It was intimate, and he loved it.

"I didn't have anywhere to put my gun," she confessed, smoothing the slick fabric over her thigh with a nervous hand, and she seemed more uncertain of herself than he had ever seen her. 

"I see that," he said, not even hiding the steady crawl of his eyes over her body. God, but she was lush; every last curve.

She rolled her eyes and he reached out to grasp her hand, holding it in his as he raised their hands to her face and brushed his thumb over her lip. "You look stunning," he told her.

And she did. She'd always been beautiful, always drawn admiring glances from men who appreciated her pretty face or her toned legs or the curve of her ass. But that had been when she was wearing a business suit, and her femininity had been subdued. Nothing about her femininity was subdued tonight, and she looked radiant.

She looked pleased with his reaction, but cleared her throat to cover it. "What are you drinking?" she asked, as the barman set Mulder's fresh drink down in front of him, paraphrasing the question he'd been asked only moments earlier. Mulder huffed a laugh and she smiled a confused little smile at his response, "What?"

He shook his head, leaning forward, "Nothing, it's just... Nothing," he said, not wanting to break the moment by telling her about his bold admirer. "It's Jack Daniels and Coke."

Scully squinted at the well-stocked shelves behind the bar and smiled politely at the bartender, who hovered waiting for her order "Vodka tonic, please." 

"Sure thing," the bartender said, moving away to fix her drink.

She turned her attention back to Mulder, and the case, "Did the door staff recognize Roberts?"

"No. The only lead we have depends on how much Quantico can clear up those stills from the Zoo camera."

Her drink arrived in an iced glass on a black cocktail napkin and Scully stabbed at the lime with the stirrer until the crystal clear liquid was thick with pulp. "Are you sure it's a woman, Mulder?" 

"It's blurry, but yes, I think so."

"Because I saw Mr. Roberts, Mulder. I did the autopsy on what little was left of him, and the force that must have been involved is almost unimaginable. Even if there was some kind of hand-weapon that could do that, the kick- back would be immense."

"It didn't look like she used any weapon at all, Scully," he reiterated his earlier assertion and he could see the slight shake of her head as she discarded the idea. "She hit him square in the chest with her hand," he said, grabbing Scully's right hand from her lap and pressing it against his chest to demonstrate.

Her fingers splayed in surprise, her hand remaining pressed against him even after he let his own drop away. Her touch was cool on the overheated skin of his chest, and he could feel every minute twitch of her fingers against him. If anyone had asked he would have sworn he could feel her fingerprints through the thin cotton of his shirt, and he could see by the darkening of her eyes that she was affected by the touch too. His heart thudded ferociously under his ribs and he wondered if she could feel it.

"Mulder, listen to what you're saying," she implored huskily, leaving her hand flush against his chest. "No human could do that to another. Man or woman. It's impossible."

"Scully, how many things have we seen that defied belief? I'm telling you, the killer didn't have a weapon -" a hard shove of an elbow in his back stopped him mid-flow and propelled him forwards on his stool. His hand closed around Scully's waist as he grasped for something to maintain his balance, and the hand she had resting on his chest bit into the muscle there, keeping him upright.

"Sorry, man," a voice behind him called, and Mulder rolled his eyes.

"It's busy in here," Scully said, and with the rise and fall of each shallow breath that she took, his hand slid against the soft fabric covering her hip. "Have clubs always been this busy?"

The silk of her dress was temptingly soft under his fingers and without really thinking about it, he circled his thumb against the protrusion of her hipbone. He was close to her now, scant inches between them, and the firm joint of her knee brushed against the inside of his thigh as his legs bracketed her stool, holding himself up. He could smell the vodka and lime on her breath, could see the sheen of moisture on her bottom lip where she'd run her tongue over it. He wanted to kiss her, to close the gap between them and claim her mouth with his. He'd been turned on since she'd arrived twenty minutes ago, but now, with his fingers tracing circles on her waist and her hand teasing the tense muscles of his chest, his whole body was buzzing with want. 

Her eyes flickered across his face, returning to his mouth again and again, and knew she was thinking the same thing. Her lips parted and he leaned forward, intoxicated by her proximity. She smelled so good, he could hardly imagine what she would taste like.

"Let's get out of here?" she murmured and, having little blood left in his head with which to operate his brain, it took him a second to process. 

"Ok," he breathed, pulling back to give his pheromone- fuddled head a chance. She was right. He didn't want their first real kiss to be in a bar, surrounded by people, getting jostled at every step. "Ok," he said again, more firmly this time, and he let go of her waist to tug his coat on and throw some money on the bar for their drinks. 

Scully turned to pick up her coat and he took the opportunity to adjust his pants surreptitiously, grateful for the darkened interior of the club. When she turned back, the skin across her chest was mottled pink, and even in the subdued lighting, he could see the harsh outline of her nipples against her dress as she shrugged into her coat. The evidence of her own arousal was reassuring, and he slipped a hand around her waist to guide her out of the club and onto the street.

It was cold outside. A light frost coated the sidewalk and though he couldn't make out any stars in the sky, it was a clear night and the air smelled fresh and crisp. He looked down at Scully, a pang of something stronger than just lust clutching at his heart. "What do you want to do?"

"Shall we walk some?" she asked and he nodded, falling into step beside her. After a half-dozen steps, her small hand slid into his. He gave her fingers a quick squeeze.

They headed without discussion towards Lake Shore Drive, and then continued south, the black abyss of Lake Michigan to their left.

"What were you going to say?" Scully asked after a few minutes, and he hummed a question. "In the bar, you were going to say something about the killer not having a weapon."

"Oh," he said, mental gears crunching as he switched back into work mode. Which was easier said than done when he had an erection the size of Montana and Scully was rubbing her thumb in circles over his fingers as she held his hand. "I was going to say that extreme strength of this kind isn't unheard of."

"Like mothers lifting cars off their babies?"

"No, no, not that. There are tribes in South America who practice black magic - one particular derivative of the Mayans in the Chiapas highlands believed they could summon divine forces, enabling them to right any wrongs that had been done to them."

"And you think that Roberts killer, this woman, felt wronged by him somehow?."

"Maybe she felt spurned -"

"His body didn't look like he spurned her."

Mulder chuckled, "I don't know, maybe he didn't respect her in the morning. Maybe she wanted to see him again and he said no. This Mayan offshoot, they performed intricate rituals to convene the spirits of their ancestors, blessing a powerful concoction of herbs which, once consumed, they believed gave them almost super-human powers." 

"So you're saying we have a female killer, hopped up on herbs, with a supersonic mallet for a hand and a grudge against Kurt Roberts?" Scully scoffed, though the crinkles at the corner of her eyes as she smiled softened the jab, as did the gentle squeeze she gave his fingers.

"Maybe I'm just talking out of my ass," he consented with a smile and the air between them crackled. He appreciated Scully's feminine wiles, and tonight they were evident in spades, but the thing that he really loved about Scully was that he could talk to her. And she listened; even when she didn't believe a word he was saying.

"What kind of herbs?" she asked at last, ending the charged silence.

"Absinthe, vervain, aniseed -"

"Aniseed?"

"Yeah, why?" he asked, noting the serious look which had replaced her smile.

"When I was doing the autopsy there was a second where I thought I smelled aniseed," she looked concerned, like she might've missed something important. "I thought I'd imagined it." 

"Why didn't you say anything?" he asked curiously, tone lacking any judgment.

Scully sighed, "When I was sick, with my cancer... I lost my sense of smell. It never really returned to normal." 

"You can't smell anything?"

"No, I can. It's just... not as sensitive as it used to be. And sometimes I think I can smell something and I can't." 

She was clearly embarrassed by her perceived disability, and Mulder used their clasped hands to tug her a little closer, nudging her shoulder with his arm.

"You mean I've been buying expensive cologne all this time and I could've just used Axe?"

She laughed out loud, an unusual sound he heard so rarely. "I hear it's very popular with the ladies."

"You have no idea," he agreed, stopping on the sidewalk opposite the Forth Presbyterian Church. Strategically placed lamps highlighted the intricate gothic spire of the second-oldest building on the street, and behind them, the monolithic needle of the Hancock Center reached for the sky. Old and new; bracketing them as he let go of Scully's hand and wound his fingers into the silky hair on either side of her head, smoothing his thumbs over the soft skin in front of her ears.

Her hands hovered awkwardly in the air for a second, before settling on his forearms, and her gaze danced between his eyes and his mouth. She wanted him; in the dilation of her eyes, in the tensing of her fingers on his arms, he could see that she wanted him. Her lips parted in readiness as he inclined his head towards hers. And then pressed a kiss against her glabella.

He pulled back and she drew in a shuddering breath. The anticipation was almost overwhelming; with every step closer, every new touch, every whisper of his fingers or lips against her skin, he craved her more. And if there had once been doubt that she felt the same, the dark, predatory look in her eyes confirmed that her own patience with this lengthy seduction was wearing thin.

Mulder jerked his head at the gleaming black building behind them, "You wanna go up?"

She looked like she wanted to jump him. Or clobber him. "Mulder, it's after midnight. They'll be closed," she said in voice verging on whiny.

He started towards the entrance, pulling her after him, "Humor me."

***

An elevator ride to the 96th floor of the Hancock Center took less than 45 seconds, rising through the stories at up to 30 feet per second. She didn't know what Mulder had said to the security guard to get them admitted, but when she returned from the restroom, he'd been holding open the elevator door waiting for her, and the security guard had been watching them with a benevolent smile warming his craggy face.

Her pulse was hammering in her veins as she leaned back against the elevator wall, ears popping. She could scarcely remembered being so stirred-up. She felt agitated, awakened; more alive than she had done in a long time, and when she followed Mulder out into the darkened bar, it was with the sense that whatever happened between them tonight, or any night from now on, would be the right thing.

"What did you say to the security guard?" she asked, compelled to use a library-safe voice, despite the fact that they were alone in the lounge, as he led her through the tables towards the vast windows overlooking the south of the city. 

"That we were on a case. That seeing the city from up here would help us."

"He believed you?" she asked, looking up to his shadowed face, lit only by the dim light emanating from the optics behind the bar.

"I was telling the truth." He stopped in front of the window and held out his hand, which she accepted, and he pulled her the final few feet until she was standing inches from the window, the hard plane of his body warm at her back.

"It's beautiful," she said quietly, looking down on the city, oozing with life before them as far as the eye could see, while they stood in the still, detached silence above. She reached out with her right hand to trace a map of the glowing streets on the window. The glass was cold and the heat of her skin left a faint smudge of condensation.

"Why did you want to come up here?"

Mulder was silent for a long time; and the only noise in the vast bar was the gentle rhythm of their breathing. When he eventually spoke, his tone was soft and thoughtful, and she knew that he had chosen his words with care.

"A while ago you asked me if I ever wanted to stop, to get out of the car and live a normal life."

She opened her mouth to tell him that she didn't need ordinary, didn't want ordinary and he pressed a finger to her lips, silencing her. When he was satisfied that she would not try to speak, he trailed his right finger down, over her lower lip, her chin, her neck, the smooth expanse of her chest that was bared by her dress until his hand was splayed against her stomach, hot and insistent over the aching scar on her abdomen. Her eyes refocused, away from the glittering scape of the city, to their reflection in the crystalline glass before them, and so she saw as well as felt Mulder dip his head into the crook of her neck, inhaling, breathing her in as he held her tightly against him. Her body thrummed with the electric sensation of his touch.

His lips pressed against her ear as he whispered his truth. "This is the reality of our lives," he said, taking her left hand from by her side and pressing her palm against the cold glass of the window, covering her hand with his own. "We will always be separate, you and I, because the things that we've learned have changed us." He pressed a kiss against her earlobe, and she shivered. 

When he continued, his voice was rounded by emotion, "Scully, if I could go back and change it all, so that we had never met, I don't think I could. Your abduction, Melissa, your cancer - I'm sorry for these things.... but I wouldn't change them. Because everything that's happened has brought us here, to this moment." 

His breath was hot and prickly in her ear, and she was awash with conflicting sensations, the cold of the window under their hands, the heat of his hand on her stomach, the rub of his stubble against her cheek. "I can't give you normal; we've seen too much, we *know* too much for that. But I can help you to search for answers to the questions you have, about what happened to you, and why. And we can try to find a way to fight back. Together. Because that's all I know now, Scully, you and me, together." 

Scully let her head fall forward until her forehead rested on the cold glass next to their joined hands, overwhelmed by his words. 

"Is it enough?" he asked throatily, "Am I enough?"

It was, though she had never imagined he would ever ask. For so long she had known that there could never be anyone else. Whether it was fate or circumstance or lack of other options, she could not imagine herself with anyone but Mulder. And when she had finally come to that realization, she had thought there would be a gradual shift from partners to lovers, that one day she would simply look back and find that they had settled into a new relationship. She had never considered that he might actually give her a choice. That he might think there even was a choice to be made.

"Yes," she said softly, and then twisting in his arms so that she could face him, she repeated more firmly, "Yes."

Mulder smiled, looking relieved, and his brown eyes were flecked with reflected light from the city below. "I'm very pleased to hear you say that, Agent Scully," he said, hands sliding inside her coat to squeeze her waist. "I didn't want to have to revert to Plan B."

The fine hairs on the back of his neck stood up under the stroke of her fingertips, "Which was what?"

"Pining forever," he mumbled, leaning down to sip at the corner of her mouth. His breath was hot on her cheek, and his hands left the curves of her waist to slide over the slick material covering her ribs and back. "A lot of takeout pizza. Renew my Adult Video News membership."

It was hard to hear him over the thrum of her pulse, hard to process his words when his hands were *everywhere*, stroking her into a frenzy. She choked out a laugh and Mulder took the opportunity to take her lower lip between his teeth, biting lightly. Her head exploded, and her uterus along with it, cramping violently under his assault. 

She snaked her tongue out to touch his upper lip, a light brush of skin against skin but enough to elicit a groan from somewhere deep in his belly. His tongue followed hers back between her lips, thick and hot, and delving deep into the recesses of her mouth. He tasted of alcohol and something else that was uniquely him, something masculine and raw. 

Mulder pressed her back against the window, hips hard and insistent against hers, as they devoured one another. The heat of his body was a delicious contrast to the cold at her back. 

Scully jolted in surprise when his crotch vibrated against her.

"Fuck," Mulder muttered against her mouth, dragging one hand from her left breast, where he'd been working the nipple into a turgid peak, to dig his cell phone from his pants pocket. Her breast mourned the loss of his touch and she let her head droop against his shoulder, breath coming in ragged pants, as he pressed the cell to his ear. "Yeah?"

Scully buried her nose in his neck, worrying the damp flesh with her swollen lips, and Mulder thrust against her, his spare hand pressed into the small of her back. He was hard against her belly, and oh so tempting.

"Christ, where?.... Where is that?...." he said and she could tell from his tone of voice that something bad had happened. Another murder, she surmised. She pulled back to look at him and he was watching her with apologetic eyes while he spoke to someone, Kryngold probably. "No we're not far away, we can get a cab... Twenty minutes."

Mulder disconnected the call. "Another murder?" she asked.

He smoothed her ruffled hair down with gentle hands. "Yes, they found a body on North Orleans Street, under the L track. That was Kryngold."

"The same MO?"

"Yes," Mulder let his hands drop to her shoulders, squeezing lightly before he let go and stepped back to smooth his own hair and clothing back into place. "He wants us to come down and take a look."

"Of course," she agreed, forcing her mind back into work mode, even though her body was molten with want. She dared not look at herself in the mirror-like steel of the elevator doors as they waited for the car, so afraid she was of the wanton, tousled face that would look back.

"I'm sorry, Scully."

"Mulder, it's work," she said firmly as they entered the elevator, and she jabbed the button for the lobby and stood next to him, both of them watching the decreasing LED display as they sped through the floors. She could sense him anxious beside her, already anticipating her regret, and in the seconds before they reached the lobby and the doors opened, she reached out to clasp his fingers in hers. Reassuringly. Encouragingly.

"Rain check?" he asked as he followed her out into the lobby.

"You better believe it." 

***

"Hail, hail, the gang's all here," said Detective Kryngold over the top of a steaming cup of coffee, fresh from the 24- hour Dunkin Donuts down the street. It was bitter and thick, with an aftertaste like he'd been sucking on tar, but it was almost 2am on a day when his shift had begun at eight the previous morning. It was good enough for him.

The Fibbies looked brighter than he felt; buzzed actually, as they flashed their badges and ducked under the police tape to join him behind a dumpster, next to the swiss- cheese remains of another poor schmuck. Kryngold took another sip of his coffee and eyeballed the agents while they stared at the mess of blood and guts spattering the ground for 20 feet around. 

Neither of them seemed in the least shocked or sickened by the gory sight, and he wondered where they had been to have gotten to the scene so quickly. Agent Scully's coat was cinched shut, so he couldn't see what she was wearing, but judging by her snazzy shoes and her smoky make-up, he'd hazard a guess it wasn't standard FBI-issue. She glanced around for the scene kit and dug a pair of blue booties from a dispenser, balancing on her partner's arm while she covered her expensive looking shoes. Moving forward, and careful not to disturb anything, she crouched next to the corpse. Pulling a mini Maglite from her coat pocket, she peered into the gaping abdominal wound, nose scant inches from the torn flesh. Kryngold prided himself on his cast-iron stomach, but a thousand dollars wouldn't get him that close.

"The ME already pronounced it?" she asked.

"Yeah. Well, one of the assistants did. God himself would have to kark it for Hal Barker to attend a scene in the middle of the night."

"Got an ID?"

Kryngold pulled an evidence bag containing a blood- smeared wallet from a cardboard box beside him. Agent Scully looked up at him and then went back to inspecting the body, having donned some gloves she'd produced miraculously from her coat pocket.

"Who found him?" Agent Mulder asked, scanning the street around them. The L ran down the east side, but opposite it were a hodgepodge of apartments and houses. Dozens and dozens of windows overlooking the spot where Isaac Kurtz lay dead, and yet only now, with the patrol cars lighting the street up in blue and white, were curtains beginning to twitch.

"Patrol actually," Kryngold said, gesturing to a uniformed officer a couple dozen yards away who was leaning against the hood of his car, talking to some crime scene technicians. "They were doing a routine patrol about an hour ago, noticed someone lying right here on the sidewalk, and checked it out. He was obviously already dead."

"Any witnesses?"

"I fucking doubt it, in this city, but I've got four guys knocking on the doors now."

"Mulder?" Agent Scully called, and her partner's fucking neck snapped, he turned to her so quick. He trotted over and she looked up, pretty and untouched in the middle of the carnage. "Can you smell him?"

Mulder leaned down, sniffing, and nodded in agreement. 

"What are you doing?" he asked, looking at the two agents with unconcealed bewilderment. 

"There's a lingering scent of aniseed," Mulder explained, like it was the most natural thing in the world. "Roberts had it too. I think there may be an element of black magic involved in these cases."

Kryngold blinked at him, letting the words sink in. "What?"

"Black magic. Historically, there have been certain South American tribes who used black magic to summon the spirits of their ancestors, giving them enormous physical and spiritual power. Aniseed was one of the ingredients in the potion."

"It's one line of investigation; we're not pursuing it in isolation," Agent Scully said carefully before her partner could continue, and she joined them on the small patch of blood free ground by the dumpster. She pressed her fingers into the back of Mulder's elbow, a subtle gesture to rein him in, and he nodded.

"Of course."

"Of course," Kryngold echoed, unable to stop his head from wobbling in disbelief, "I'd hate to have to tell my Captain that the FBI want to pin this one on the Aztecs."

"Mayan."

"Huh?"

Mulder's mouth quirked in a smile and his partner rolled her eyes. "It was a Mayan offshoot that exhibited these practices."

"The FBI pay you to come up with this shit, legend and lore and all that?" he asked, though not unkindly. There was something about this pair that was different to the suits the Bureau typically sent. Sure the usual gals didn't turn up to a crime scene looking like sex on two legs, but this pair had a thoughtful manner about them. They were smart and they cared, and after fifteen years in the PD, Kryngold appreciated how rare that was.

"You'd be amazed by what the FBI pays us to do," Mulder replied dryly.

Returning to the matter at hand, Scully gestured to the body on the ground. "The MO is clearly very similar to the previous case, but I want to get the exam done. He's been dead less than two hours I'd say, there may be physical evidence here that we didn't get last time." She was firm in her manner, but there was a tiredness in her face that Kryngold hadn't noticed when they first arrived on the scene, a greyness to her pretty face.

"Scully," Mulder murmured, squeezing her elbow in a replay of the manoeuvre she'd used on him earlier. "They've got the scene secured now. And he's not gonna be any more dead in the morning; just leave it for tonight." 

"Yeah," Kryngold agreed, glancing at his watch, "It's gone two am. Tonight, tomorrow - it doesn't make a difference."

She looked a bit pissed about having been scotched, but she nodded in agreement.

"Good," Kryngold said, screwing up his empty cup and tossing it into the dumpster. "I've been on since eight yesterday morning; the CSI guys don't need me around to supervise scooping him into a body bag. I'm gonna rally the troops and then I, for one, am going to get some damn sleep." He eyed the agents in front of him, figuring that had they not gotten his call, their evening would've ended up rather differently. As it was, they both looked like all they wanted to do was crawl into bed and sleep. 

"You two should do the same," he said, giving them a final wave and heading off to a stiff drink and his own bed.

***

Holiday Inn Downtown, Chicago

Mulder leaned heavily against the doorjamb as Scully struggled to get the lock to accept her key card. She sighed in frustration and he reached out to put his hand over hers, and then taking the key from her, he slid it into the lock and the little light flickered to green.

"Thanks," she muttered, pushing the door open and turning back to face him. She looked exhausted, still beautiful in her sexy little dress and her sultry make-up, but rather than vibrant like she'd been early, she looked dead beat, and ready to crash for a week. 

"You want some company?" he asked hopefully, thinking only of sleep and the sweet comfort of holding her the previous night.

She looked up to him, a little shyly, and he could see her trying to generate a spark of energy and interest. It would've been endearing, had he not been ready to collapse in bed himself.

"To sleep?" he clarified, and she looked enormously relieved.

"Yes, I'd like that," she admitted and left him to follow her into the room. She shucked her coat as she moved, draping it haphazardly over the arm of the Queen Anne chair. Her shoes followed in an abandoned heap on the floor by the armoire, her earrings deposited on the bedside table, and she flopped face first onto the bed with a groan.

Mulder stood by the side of the bed and removed his coat and shoes, and with effort, Scully rolled onto her back in the middle of the large, inviting bed. "I'm so tired I can't move," she confessed sounding like she was minutes away from sleep.

"Shhh, sleep," he instructed and she hummed in agreement.

He climbed onto the bed on his knees, sliding his hand along the length of her stockinged leg, from ankle to just above where the hem of where her dress fell. Scully smiled with her eyes closed and he lay down on his side beside her, the heat of her body warm against his belly, and pressed a kiss against the corner of her mouth. Her hand grappled blindly for the hair on the back of his head and she turned her face into his neck, breath slowing, slowing until she was asleep against him.

"Goodnight, Scully," he whispered, settling down beside her gently, curling his body into her, and it wasn't too long before he slept too.


	5. Chapter 5

Holiday Inn Downtown, Chicago

Scully shrugged into her blazer and smoothed the lapels down, readjusting her cross over the pale pink vest she wore underneath. The woman who looked back at her in the mirror looked professional and in-control, two things she'd always strived for. 

She didn't really consider herself a beautiful woman, but she knew she had a tidy face, and with a sleek haircut and the right clothes, she presented an attractive enough image. And when she thought back to Mulder's face the previous night as they'd kissed in the bar, he certainly seemed to see something in her he liked.

She'd always looked young for her age; had been carded in bars long past her twenty-eighth birthday, when she could've pulled her FBI ID instead of her driver's licence. It was something she'd only come to appreciate as she got older and her friends complained about encroaching wrinkles and sagging jawlines. She was thirty-five now, exactly halfway through her three score years and ten, and if anything, she looked better than she ever had; gone was the roundness in her face she'd loathed in her twenties, that had persisted even when the rest of her was skin and bone. Her skin was clear and her eyes were bright. If she were a dog, she thought, smirking at herself in the mirror, she'd be in perfect health.

She wasn't even sure why she was looking at herself with such a critical eye, except that with this slow shift in her relationship with Mulder, she'd started thinking of herself as a woman again - something she hadn't even realized she'd stopped doing. For the longest time she'd been a daughter, a friend, a sister, a partner, an Agent. But never just a woman. 

Only in these past weeks, as they edged closer and closer to making an irrevocable change in their relationship, had she realized that no matter how much she tried to bury it under a veneer of professionalism, she was a woman with the same damn needs as every other; with feelings and passions that couldn't just be ignored. That she no longer wanted to ignore. No, she was ready to exploit them for all they were worth. 

Poor Mulder wouldn't know what hit him if they could just get a few hours together without the phone ringing, or someone falling asleep. She could almost picture his face, if she were to start tearing his clothes off and devour him the way she wanted to. 

Scully shook the image from head and turned away from the mirror, pushing the cracked bathroom door open fully to reveal the tousled bed she'd risen from, and still occupied by a slumbering Mulder, now spread-eagled in the middle of the large mattress.

She leaned down, brushing her lips over Mulder's in a kiss so light her lips protested the lack of contact. Pulling back an inch, she let her eyes caress his face. He was so peaceful, huddled in his cocoon of white sheets, long eyelashes lush against his tan cheek, and she wanted nothing more than to lay down with him and go back to sleep. One more kiss. She'd allow herself just one more kiss before she left for the morgue.

This time she pressed harder, moulding her lips to his and marvelling at the way his plump lower lip fit so perfectly between hers. She felt him startle under her. 

"Mmmm," he hummed, cupping her face with a sleep- warm hand. "Where're you going?"

Scully braced herself over him, a hand on the mattress by his pillow, and it felt wonderful to lean her cheek into the warmth of his palm. "To do the autopsy," she whispered, because for some reason it felt like using a full voice would shatter the spell.

"Oh," he said, reaching up to tuck her hair behind her ear with his other hand and she leant her head forward a little so that she could trace the tip of his nose with hers.

"I didn't mean to wake you."

"It was a nice way to be woken," he admitted, a smile crinkling his eyes, and then, before she knew it, he'd moved his hands to her waist and pulled her onto the bed. She let out a surprised squeak as he rolled them over so that their positions were reversed and he was looking down at her. "But I can't believe you thought that pathetic little peck was a satisfactory goodbye kiss."

"Oh!" she choked out a surprised laugh and he rubbed his nose on hers in a repeat of her earlier gesture. She scraped her fingernails over the crisp hairs on the back of his neck and his hand slid beneath her blazer, fingers dancing over her cotton covered ribs. "What should I have done?"

"Something more like this," he suggested, dipping his head down to seize her mouth with his, tongue snaking out and sliding between her open lips. Her eyes slid shut as she savored the earthy flavor of his mouth, so new to her, while the familiar smell of him was all around, filling her nostrils with his soapy brume. She could drown in him, but there was work to be done, and every second she stayed in bed with Mulder only made it harder to go. Reluctantly, she released his mouth; pressing little kisses to the corner of his lips, his cheek, his eyelids before she pulled back fully.

"I have to go," she said half-heartedly, eyes lingering on his full mouth, her hands still sifting his silky hair. There was something decidedly decadent about lying in bed, fully clothed, and making out with a man in his underwear. 

Mulder's huge hands bracketed her waist and he nudged her nose with his again. "Okay," he agreed, but made no move to release her and with a muted groan, she rolled away from him and stood up, smoothing her clothing back down. 

Mulder lolled back on the pillow and looked at her, his face a mixture of desire and disbelief. "Okay?" he repeated, this time a question, seeking reassurance.

Scully nodded, ducking down once more until their lips were almost touching. "Okay," she agreed and then pressed one last kiss against his mouth before moving away to collect her briefcase. With her hand on the doorknob, she looked back, sharing a small, secret smile with him before she stepped out into the hallway, and left Mulder lying in her bed.

***

Libby's Diner, W Erie Street, Chicago

"Fancy meeting you here," Kryngold said, sliding his tall frame into the vinyl covered booth. Purple smudges shadowed his bloodshot eyes, but he was clean-shaven and wore a fresh navy suit, with a white shirt and a tie the color of decomposed peaches. It clashed with the red upholstery on his seat.

Mulder folded his menu, which had exactly the same items on it as every other diner in the country, and looked over at the Detective. "Did you get any sleep?"

Kryngold scrubbed a hand over his face, and gestured to the waitress with his empty mug. "I think I got five minutes when I was in the john this morning," he said tiredly.

"I thought you were going home?"

"Haven't you spoken to the lovely Agent Scully yet?" the Detective volleyed, as the waitress, a buxom blonde with kind eyes, teased hair and a fringe she'd styled over a Coke can, poured coffee into his outstretched mug. She topped off Mulder's half-empty cup and then pulled an order pad out of her apron.

"What can I getcha's?"

Kryngold turned his attention to the waitress and Mulder half-listened as he placed a complicated order for eggs. The last time he'd spoken to Scully was an hour before Kryngold's call inviting him to breakfast, when she'd woken him with a soft, sweet kiss to say she was headed to the OCME. But it didn't seem pertinent to mention that now. 

"What about you, honey?" asked the buxom blonde, smiling down at Mulder. He made a rote order for pancakes and as soon as she was gone, turned his attention back to Kryngold.

"No. Why?" 

The detective's eyebrows headed for his hairline, but before Mulder could press the issue, his cell phone rang. He shoved the phone to his ear in time to catch the tail end of Scully reaming someone a new one. The shrill stab of her voice crackled on the line.

".. No!! Don't move it like that you'll... Jesus, just.. just leave him, I'll take care of it!"

"Scully?" he asked cautiously, and across from him, Kryngold shook four packets of Sweet 'n' Low into his coffee and looked like he was settling down for the show.

"Mulder. Have you spoken to Kryngold?"

"I'm having breakfast with him now, why?"

"Isaac Kurtz's body went missing last night -"

"What?!"

"It's turned up now but it's in pieces. The autopsy's going to take me all day."

"What happened to it?"

"There was a mix-up with the funeral home, they just delivered him to the OCME now and, well, it's not pretty."

Mulder was glad he'd decided against the breakfast burrito. "Sounds like you've got your work cut out. I'm going to do the background on Isaac Kurtz; maybe there's a link between him and Roberts."

"Maybe." Scully said, her tone having returned to normal now the body had been slopped onto the gurney to her satisfaction. "Good luck then."

He heard the rustle of her moving to disconnect the call and he stammered out her name, feeling that after the previous night and morning, there should be something more to say. Except Kryngold was listening in with undisguised interest, and in any case he wasn't sure what he could say without sounding like a teenager.

"I, ah, I'll see you later then?"

Scully paused, and when she replied, he could hear the smile in her voice. "See you later, Mulder."

He tucked the phone away just as the food orders arrived. When they were settled, Kryngold took a hearty bite of whole-wheat toast and regarded Mulder as he chewed.

"She's something else, your partner," he observed, "I thought heads were gonna roll when that body was missing. She had old Hal outta bed at 6am, and believe me that hasn't happened in a long time."

"What happened?" Mulder asked pouring syrup in a careful hypotrochoid over his pancakes, feeling only marginally guilty that he was enjoying breakfast while Scully began the autopsy from hell. 

"Until recently, the OCME took care of moving bodies from the crime scene to the morgue in-house. But you know, some bureaucrat figured they could save a buck contracting it out so now they use two or three private contractors to do the work," Kryngold explained, around forkfuls of egg. "After the CSI guys so painstakingly loaded Kurtz into the bag last night, he got dumped in the back of a private ambulance, driven round half the city and then for some unknown reason, taken direct to the funeral home. Didn't pass go, didn't collect $200."

Mulder didn't really know what to say about that, so he took another bite of pancake and Kryngold shrugged. "Chicago's not exactly a backwater; we don't usually make rookie mistakes like this but I admit, this time we fucked up. By the time I figured out where he was, the assholes had dumped the body in the cold store and what was left of Mr Kurtz was swilling around in the toe-end of the body bag."

"You think there's anything left?" Mulder asked, thinking of potentially lost forensic evidence.

"If there is, she'll be lucky to find it."

The waitress paused at their table to refill their cups and as he watched her walk away, ample hips swaying, Mulder considered the narrowing avenues of investigation still open to them.

"So, what, you're not running down drug-dealers today?"

Kryngold snagged a napkin from the dispenser on the table, wiping his mouth he smirked at Mulder. "The State's Attorney's been leaning on the Super, who leans on my Captain, who leans on me." The spent napkin got tossed on the greasy remains of his eggs. "I'm relieved of my other duties until this is solved."

"So do you want to start?" Mulder asked thinking they needed to do the usual round of known associates and employers.

"Kurtz lived alone, but I wouldn't mind checking out his place. And he ran an import business from a warehouse on the South Side with a friend."

"You got a car?" Mulder asked, tossing enough money for their breakfast on the table. Kryngold dug his hand in his pocket and dangled a scuffed Ford key from his middle finger. "Let's go then."

***

South Merril Avenue, Chicago

Isaac Kurtz lived in a west facing 3rd floor apartment in a tired duplex on South Merril. Security in the building was non-existent, the lock on street door busted and hanging on by a single, loose screw. 

"You have the keys?" Mulder asked as they hit the landing on the top floor, which led left or right to two battered apartment doors.

Kryngold pulled a nylon pouch from his pocket and extracted his lock-pick. "In a manner of speaking."

The more time Mulder spent with the Detective, the more he liked him.

The door to number 3L swung open with a pained creak, telling the tale of one too many busts and they entered the dark and skanky apartment of Isaac Kurtz.

It was a small, three room affair, with an open plan living room/kitchenette, bathroom and a small bedroom off to the rear. It stank of stale cigarette smoke, something sweet and cloying like weed, and unwashed bed linen. It was the kind of place where you didn't want to touch too much.

"I like what he's done with the place," Mulder quipped, poking something festering in a Subway wrapper on the chipped coffee table with his pen. In his head, he could hear Scully's voice saying 'let this be a lesson to you', but his apartment, scruffy though it was, was light years away from this pit. "Did he have a record?"

Kryngold flipped through a pile of papers and receipts by the grubby Bakelite phone on the kitchen counter. "Nothing major. Petty pilfering when he was a kid, receipt of stolen property, the usual skulduggery. No time though, just a slap on the wrists."

"The Justice System at work. Have you -"

"Yo, who the fuck are you man?" 

They both swivelled to look at the speaker, a thin black man standing in the doorway looking pissed off. He was in his early thirties and wore an unbuttoned shirt over a wifebeater and flared jeans. His porkpie hat completed the Huggy Bear look.

"Father Christmas," Kryngold said, holding his badge up, "Who the fuck are you?"

Huggy held his hands up in surrender, "Brian Delray," he said stepping further into the apartment and taking stock of what they were doing. "What y'all doing here?"

Mulder tucked his pen back in his coat. "You a friend of Isaac's?" he asked and Delray nodded. "Are you aware that he was murdered last night?"

Delray lowered his eyes, a look of genuine sorrow flickering across his glib face. "Yeah."

"You know anything about that?" Kryngold asked, moving away from the counter to join them standing around the coffee table like it was a campfire.

"Me? No, man!" he said quickly, maybe a little too quickly.

"When was the last time you saw him?"

"Last night," he said, evasively, and Mulder suspected Delray had benefited from the tutelage of more than one defense attorney who'd suggested that less was less.

"What, here? You were over here at his place?" Kryngold pressed.

"No."

"You got something to hide, Mr Delray?"

"Nuh huh," Delray shook his head, eyes darting about the room, glancing off furniture and possessions, but returning with regularity to a King Edward cigar box sitting on the bookcase.

With narrowed eyes, Mulder followed his gaze to the cigar box and walked over to it, flipping the lid open with the nail on his right index finger. Inside was some crumpled ten and twenty dollar bills and a small baggie of cocaine. "What've we got here?" he asked, watching Delray squirm.

"I don't know nothin' about that, man."

"Uh huh," Mulder said doubtfully, flipping the lid closed and digging his hands in his pockets as he walked back to stand in front of Delray. Mulder was at least three or four inches taller and had a good thirty pounds on him, and Delray swallowed nervously as Mulder approached. "Start talking Mr Delray. What do you know about last night?"

"Dude I told you, nothing. Look, I been staying here for a few nights, had some shit goin' on with my girl, but we sorted it. I was out with her last night, we saw Isaac when we were out, he ah -" Delroy glanced nervously at Kryngold, who raised his eyebrows in a gesture of 'spit it out, asshole'. "He had some stuff for us."

"'Stuff'?"

""You know, some blow."

"Where was this?" Mulder asked.

Sensing that neither Mulder nor Kryngold were particularly concerned with the drugs, Delray relaxed under his silly hat. "Espionage. It's a club on North Astor." 

Mulder's pulse picked up. Jesus he'd been right; the club was the link, the hunting ground.

"Me and my girl, we was there to party. Isaac just came by to hook us up, but then he got in with some real hot girl and they was damn close," Delray whistled, pulling a pouch of tobacco and some Joker rolling papers from his pocket.

"What'd she look like?"

"Sweet man, real sweet," he said, licking the edge of the paper and rolling it carefully between his fingers to seal it.

Mulder twisted his mouth impatiently, getting a curious look from Kryngold. "Brunette, blonde? How tall was she?"

"Uh blonde, I guess. And she was real small, looked like your hands would wrap right around her waist," he said appreciatively, gesturing the manoeuvre with his own hands. "She had an amazing mouth. Full, lush lips. I'd let her suck my -"

"Ok Delray, I think we get the picture," Mulder interrupted, feeling a cold streak of anxiousness running through his gut. Delray was describing the woman he'd met in the club the previous night, who'd come onto him just before Scully had arrived. Fuck, she'd been right there, literally touching him, and he'd let her walk away.

"You get a name?" Kryngold asked, shooting another look Mulder's way.

"She wasn't exactly handing out business cards man," Delray snorted, and took a drag on his newly rolled cigarette. He picked a fleck of tobacco from his tongue and flicked it on the floor. "She was real hot for Isaac though. They left the club together."

Mulder nodded. She had been real hot for Issac, and Kurt Roberts before him. But who the hell was she? 

"What time was this?"

"About eleven thirty, I guess." Shit, Mulder thought, face as rigid as stone as he processed this nugget of information. Shit, shit, shit. He and Scully had still been there then, completely oblivious that they were only feet away from the killer. And her next victim. "You know where they went?" he asked tersely.

"I don't know man."

"Back here?" Kryngold asked, looking around the grungy apartment with renewed interest.

Delray shifted uncomfortably, "No. I don't know."

"Which is it?"

"No. A bunch of us came back to party, but Isaac wasn't here. I don't know where he went, I swear." Delray's oath was about as reliable as a Catholic condom but Mulder sensed there wasn't much more he could tell them. He handed Delray a card and asked him to call if he thought of anything else. 

"Hey," he called, as Mulder and Kryngold headed toward the door, "What about the, ah," he waved towards the cigar box.

Kryngold paused and looked at the box and then back at Delray. "Lock the door on your way out."

"Sure thing," Delray agreed happily.

"What was that about the club?" Kryngold asked from behind him as they trundled down the staircase, "What do you know about it?"

"Roberts was there the night before he died," Mulder said pushing open the peeling brown door to the street and stepping into the crisp March air. "We went there last night to see if the door staff remembered Roberts."

"Did you see Kurtz?"

"No," He said, turning to face Kryngold, who was not an idiot and could probably put two and two together about the way he and Scully had looked when they'd rocked up to the crime scene the previous night. He found the Detective watching him carefully, but without judgment. "While I was waiting for Scully, I was approached by a woman of the same description Delray just gave. She was extremely flirtatious, offered to buy me a drink, but when I .. when I said I was meeting someone, she backed off."

"Jesus. You think it was the killer?"

"Yes."

"But a woman though?"

Mulder told him about the stills from the camera at the zoo as they made their way back to the rusty Taurus they'd parked half a block away.

"Ok," Kryngold said, coaxing the lock on the decrepit pool car with a well-practiced hand. "And what about all that voodoo stuff from last night, where does that fit?"

"Not voodoo; black magic. I think it's what gives her the power to kill the way she does. Scully said the force required to cause the kind of damage we saw on Roberts would be thousands of pounds per square inch, but she found no ballistics evidence. How do *you* suppose it happened?"

"Well not black magic! I mean, Jesus, have you listened to yourself? We're not living in the Twilight Zone; this is a murder investigation. Yes the MO is unusual, and I don't have the answer for how Roberts or Kurtz lost their middles, but black fucking magic?" Kryngold sputtered over the top of the car, raking a hand through his wavy brown hair, and though he wasn't making any bones about his disbelief, his tone was one of incredulity rather than ridicule.

"Look, believe me or don't believe me, the fact is, we have two victims who went to that nightclub. They both left with a woman and within twenty-four hours they were dead. We need to find her."

"Did Robert's roommate give a description of the woman Roberts hooked up with?"

"No, but if I can get a clearer image back from the FBI Field Office, maybe he can make a positive ID."

Kryngold drummed his fingers on the rim of the open door. "Kurtz was found dead on 18th Street... The warehouse he works from'd only be a few blocks away from there."

"Let's check it out."

***

Warehouse 981, W 16th Street, Chicago

It was raining when they finally pulled up outside Kurtz's warehouse. Sheets of icy rain bouncing off the sidewalk and putting a dent in the filthy mountains of snow and ice that still lingered on the street corners from the previous snow. 

From the outside, Kurtz's warehouse was as beat-up looking as its neighbors on the down-at-the-heels row of dilapidated warehouses. A peeling vinyl '981' was the only indicator that they were in the right place, and the double-width up-and-over door had been visually improved by the addition of some colorful graffiti offering a range of creative suggestions for a few moves he could put on his own mother. Kryngold had seen worse, but still, there were some days when doing his job just left him feeling dirty.

They darted from the shelter of the car to the personnel door of the warehouse, collars up around their necks in a futile effort to stave off the rain. The intercom was hanging loose, inoperative, and Kryngold reached out to hammer on the blistered blue door. It swung open under his fist.

"Hark," he said in Dick Van-Dyck British, "Is that a sound within I hear?"

"Probable cause, would you say?" Mulder asked, a sliver of amusement tainting his monotone.

"I should say so," he replied, and with his right hand resting over his holster, Kryngold stepped gingerly into the darkened warehouse, flicking on a switch just inside the door that ignited the overhead lighting.

If the outside of the warehouse was tired, the inside was worse. A cavernous central area sat empty, pipework on display and a large junction box hanging on the far wall. Peeling sheetrock clung, barely, to rough frames around the sides of the warehouse, partitioning out a series of rooms which were filled with cardboard boxes stacked six-feet high. The air was damp, cold and the pungent atmosphere indicated some lingering plumbing issues.

"Looks like he used the same interior designer he did on his apartment," Mulder muttered as they picked their way slowly though the building. Toward the back, they reached a shaky looking metal staircase, with a return halfway up.

Kryngold happily let Mulder lead the way, letting him get a few stairs ahead of him before he ventured onto the wobbling structure himself.

"This woman, you said she was hot?" he asked, as they walked down a wide corridor with more rooms full of boxes on either side.

"Yeah. Why?"

"Can't imagine anyone bringing a girl back here. No wonder she offed him if this was his idea of seduction."

"I think this is the office," Mulder said as they reached a door at the end of the corridor. 

"Ding dong! Avon calling!" Kryngold called, pushing open the unpainted chipboard door.

The office was in a marginally better state of repair than the rest of the building. A ten by twelve room with a filthy window looking out onto the street below, one wall was taken up by metal shelving units loaded down with lever- arch files and dusty looking boxes of toner for the Xerox. In the center of the room was dominated by a battered looking desk. It was clear apart from a small stack of unopened mail and an OfficeMax mug with a few pens in it.

On the floor beside the desk sat a wire trashcan, empty apart from some crumpled Macdonald's napkins.

Mulder glanced over from his place by the window where he was poking through some files. "There was a Trojan wrapper in Roberts' trashcan."

Kryngold used his pen to move the trash around. "Nothing here," he said, though noting the denser consistency of one napkin, he speared it with his pen and raised it to his nose. He jerked away in disgust when he realized what it contained. "Jesus!"

"Where I went to college, they called that a wankerchief," Mulder said with a grimace as he ducked down to check out the floor beneath the desk.

"Where the hell'd you go to school? Notre Dame?" he said, exhaling viciously though his nose to evacuate the lingering scent of semen.

"Oxford."

Kryngold didn't even know what to say to that. "You're just full of surprises, Agent Mulder," he muttered in lieu of a proper response, and dropped the defiled napkin in an evidence bag.

"We should get some technicians out to check for evidence, but I don't see -" Mulder stopped talking, both of them freezing on the spot as the lights flickered off and the ambient hum of electricity in the warehouse dwindled into complete silence. The tiny, grimy window with its slatted blind provided almost no light, and he could only just make out Mulder's shape across the room. The swish of him drawing his gun was deafening though, and Kryngold swiftly palmed his own weapon.

The beam of Mulder's flashlight cut a dusty yellow band across the room and they edged out of the office into the even darker hallway, listening intently.

The pitter-patter of little rodent feet scurrying along the floor sounded somewhere to their left, and with his own flashlight, Kryngold indicated he would go first. Distantly, he realized he should call for backup, but the building was virtually condemned - the torrential rain had probably just caused a power cut.

Still, he wished he hadn't convinced Mulder to stop for a dog with everything at the cart outside the Field Office, like he was some kind of guide offering the Official Chicago Dog tour. With heartburn, onion breath and a loaded wiener sitting heavy in his belly, the last thing he wanted to do was engage in a foot pursuit. 

Holding his weapon and flashlight ahead of him in the approved position, and with his pulse beating hard in his veins, Kryngold swung around the first doorway into a storeroom piled with boxes. He took a step forward to check down the side of the pile when he heard the clang of metal ricocheting off metal, and hitting the ground. Like a quarter falling down the stairs. 

And then he was aware of the thunder of Mulder's feet as he launched a pursuit.

"FBI! Stop!" he hollered, voice echoing down the corridor, and Kryngold tore after him.

The powerful beams on his flashlight didn't make a dent in the huge warehouse when he was running and trying to aim his gun at the same time, and he felt more than saw his way to the staircase, following the darting glare of Mulder's flashlight as the Agent pounded down the shuddering stairway. Kryngold followed, his own balance severely disrupted by the Mulder induced sway.

Skidding round the corner onto the bottom flight, his gun out in front of him, the staircase went one way and Kryngold went the other. He yelped like a kicked Chihuahua as he tumbled base over apex down the sharp stairs and landed hard on his ass on the unforgiving concrete floor at the bottom. His flashlight bounced across the floor, highlighting Mulder's feed as he sped off towards the street door in pursuit of ... whatever the hell it was he was chasing.

Head spinning, Kryngold dragged himself to his feet and stumbled after him, grateful only that he had at least managed to hold onto his gun.

A loud clank, and the hiss of Mulder's 'Ah, fuck!' sounded ahead of him, and he hobbled towards the sound. Thirty painful steps on, he found Mulder staggering to his feet, clutching his head. Above him, a metal pipe jutted out a foot from the wall at head-height, before angling upward.

"She got away!" 

"You saw her?" Kryngold gasped, his breath rolling out of him in wheezing gasps, with that fucking hotdog threatening to follow.

"Yes. No," Mulder said, lumbering the final few steps to the door and peering left and right down the empty street. "I saw *someone*. Small. Someone small. It must have been her."

"Jesus," Kryngold griped twisting round to try to visually check his ass for damage. A large rip crossed the seat of his pants, the edges tinged a darker shade of navy with spilled blood. That explained why his left butt cheek felt like it was on fire. "This is turning into a goddamn clusterfuck!" he seethed.

Mulder wheeled around, looking like he took this personally, and well maybe he should. He'd been right there in the goddamn bar when Kurtz's was getting marked by the killer, only he'd been too busy eye-fucking his partner to notice.

"What's that supposed to mean?" Mulder snapped, nursing a lump on his head already the size of a lemon.

"I thought the FBI was supposed to come in here and show us yokels how to solve a case. Seems to me you've let the suspect get away from you twice now. Great work, Agent."

"Hey, at least I didn't land on my ass!"

"No, but you still smacked your head off a pipe," Kryngold snarked like a twelve-year-old and Mulder pulled a face and looked like he wanted to flip him the bird.

"Maybe you can get Agent Scully to kiss it better," he continued, pissed off about their lack of progress, his ruined suit and his aching ass. "She looks the type."

Mulder shot him a hard, filthy look and Kryngold choked off his ire, taking a few deep breaths. "Sorry," he said contritely, picking Mulder's flashlight off the ground and holding it out like a peace offering.

After a beat, Mulder accepted it. "Are you ok? he asked grudgingly.

Kryngold shrugged his injury off as manfully as he could with a hole in his pants. "Yeah."

"We should get the technicians out here ASAP," Mulder said, his voice returning to work mode, "I'm wondering if she came here because she thinks she left something that could identify her."

Kryngold nodded, "I'm gonna put in a request to my Captain for resource to stakeout the club too," he said, still feeling remorseful over his jibe about Agent Scully. "It's not going to come through in time for tonight though."

Mulder looked thoughtfully up and the building. "I don't think she'd go hunting again so soon."

"I hope you're right," he replied, pulling his cell phone from his pocket.

***

Holiday Inn Downtown, Chicago

The only thing holding Scully up was the starch in her shirt as she knocked wearily on Mulder's door. He answered after a beat, holding an open bottle of Coors against a red graze on his left temple and Scully's fatigue was forgotten as she looked at him with concern.

"My God, Mulder, what happened?" she asked, pushing the bottle aside so she could see the wound . He jerked back under her too rough touch.

"I tripped. Cracked my head on a pipe," he said, ducking his head to give her better access. His hair was silky between her fingers as she checked for other injuries.

"When was this? Did you lose consciousness? Have you been checked out?"

"Relax, Scully, it's just a bump," he assured, reaching out to nudge her shoulder with his bottle, "I'm fine."

She frowned, a familiar knot of worry in her stomach, and smoothed her fingers over his forehead. It did look like a simple enough wound, just a slight graze, already beginning to scab a little.

"Where was Kryngold when this was happening?" she asked, and Mulder smiled at the accusation in her tone, seeming to be enjoying her protectiveness.

"He's nursing a lump of his own. On his ass."

She shook her head, reassured that Mulder really was ok, "What have you two been up to?"

"Why don't you grab a shower, I'll order some room- service and we can talk about it?" he proposed, and just the suggestion of a hot shower was enough to resurrect the ache in her muscles from hunching over an autopsy table all day. She felt sticky with sweat, could smell the pungent bite of antiseptic on her skin and in her hair, and when she finally looked beyond Mulder's bruised head, she realized he'd already showered and changed into soft looking jeans and a t-shirt, his feet bare on the beige carpet. Her stomach knotted for a reason quite different from worry. "Ok," she agreed, reluctantly sliding her hand from his hair and stepping back to walk the ten feet to her own door. Mulder waited until she was inside before he closed his own door, and she wasted no time in getting out of her suit and into the shower.

The water was hot and, unlike the dives they usually ended up in, there was a fair amount of pressure. She let the water pound against her shoulders, pinpricks of heat massaging the tight muscles. Squeezing a glob of shampoo into her palm, she tried to mentally organize her findings from Isaac Kurtz's autopsy, but as she lathered her hair, she found her thoughts wandering from work matters to Mulder, and the kisses they'd shared that morning and the night before.

It was something that had popped into her mind periodically throughout the day. In the middle of taking the Stryker saw to Kurtz's head, or as she painstaking tweezed shards of bone from the tattered edges of the wound, she would remember the bite of Mulder's fingers as he gripped her waist or the flavor of his mouth as he kissed her. A niggling voice at the back of her mind, the one that had always stopped her from trying to moving her relationship with Mulder forward, reminded her that her loss of focus was exactly the reason why sleeping with Mulder would be a mistake. A huge mistake, which would put their partnership, and regaining the X-Files, in jeopardy and she pondered it at length while she rinsed her hair and dried off with the stiff hotel towel.

But, as she grabbed the hairdryer to fix her hair, another voice, one that was becoming more forceful by the day, reminded her they might never get the X-Files back. And what then? Background checks and the occasional bone of a homicide or kidnapping case wouldn't sustain either her or Mulder's interest forever. There had to be something else. Was it so wrong for a woman in her mid-thirties to want something more than just work in her life? Sure she had friendships, the one with Mulder being paramount, but all of the conversation and familiarity in the world couldn't make up for the fact that she really, really needed to get laid.

She had just shoved the hairdryer back in the holder when she heard a three-knock rap on the door that she immediately recognized as Mulder. Tightening the belt on the robe, she padded over to the door and found Mulder on the threshold, holding up a bottle of Rioja. She smiled, moving aside to let him in the door.

"Dinner should be here any minute," he said, toeing off his scuffed Nikes and going in search of the bottle opener by the mini-bar. Finding it, he waved it triumphantly and set about opening the bottle. "You got any glasses?"

Scully fetched two sweaty tumblers from the bathroom, giving them a quick rinse before holding them out for Mulder to fill. "What should we toast to?" he asked, setting the bottle aside and taking a glass from her.

A loud knock sounded at the door and she moved to answer it. "To a nice meal?" she proposed over her shoulder, finding her stomach clenching at the thought of food. 

"I'm sure we can do better than that," Mulder muttered, clearing some paperwork off the small round table by the window so that the waiter could put the tray down.

Scully scribbled on the receipt, ushering him back out while Mulder set out the tapas, bread and fruit he'd ordered. Tangy tomato and spicy chorizo smells wafted up; and Scully's stomach rumbled at the prospect of a decent meal. When had she last eaten? Did that stale bagel from the vendor in OCME staff room at lunch count?

Hungrily, she dug into the food with the gusto of someone who had been on a restricted diet for six weeks. "What happened to you and Kryngold, then?" she prompted Mulder around a mouthful of Patatas Bravas.

He told her about the trip to Kurtz' apartment and their encounter with a friend of the deceased, the lack of progress the Field Office had made on his blurry still from the Zoo camera, and the potential encounter he and Kryngold had with the killer at the warehouse. By the time he had finished his story, the dinner was gone, along with most of the wine. 

Scully wondered if he was feeling as buzzed as she was. She hardly ever drank, and the two glasses of wine she'd consumed left her feeling lethargic and loose, and more than a little bit susceptible to the way Mulder's jeans fitted around the crotch. Jesus, was it just the wine, or did he always look so... moreish. His hair was sticking up from where she'd run her fingers through it earlier and her hand itched to touch it again, feel it slide smoothly between her fingers again. 

"So tell me about the autopsy then?" he asked, sharing the last of the wine between their glasses with a little pat to the bottom of the bottle to ensure he'd drained every last drop. She had a sudden flashback to Eddie Van Bludht doing the same thing that night he came to her apartment posing as Mulder, and she released that evening was the only other time she'd gotten even remotely drunk in front of Mulder, only it hadn't even been him.

"Isaac Kurtz died the same way Roberts did," she began, standing to clear away the dinner tray. A sharp spasm attacked her back as she rose, eliciting a small gasp. 

"What's wrong?" Mulder asked, reaching for her.

"Just stiff, I'm okay," she said and Mulder shook his head, taking the tray off her. 

"Go lay down, I'll give you a back rub."

"Mulder," she blurted in a scandalized voice that was almost more embarrassing than the flush that bloomed on her cheeks at his offer. 

Mulder shoved the tray out onto the hall carpet and turned back to look at her, feigning a stern expression. "Get on the bed, Scully."

"I don't have any pyjamas on," she stuttered and he rolled his eyes.

"I won't peak," he said solemnly, and lying through his teeth judging by the glint in his eye as he gestured once more towards the bed.

Gingerly Scully turned away from him, loosening the sash on her robe, and laying down on her stomach on the cool white sheet. Her pulse jackhammered in her ears and the mattress dipped as Mulder knelt beside her. His fingers brushed against her neck as he grasped the robe and pulled it down, free of her arms and left it rumpled over her ass, her back bared to him.

She crossed her arms under her forehead and pressed her face into the pillow smelling starch and industrial detergent. She felt a twinge of embarrassment as his eyes took in every inch of her back. No, embarrassment was the wrong word; self-conscious was more apt. The angry, puckered pink of the exit wound just above her left kidney, the vibrant inks of the snake circling her lower back, the silver bump on the back of her neck. Each an ugly blemish on a body she had once been proud of, but each a reminder of a time in her life when she had survived. 

"Why are you hiding?" Mulder asked softly and her breath caught in her throat as his fingers traced the raised edges of the exit wound, as neat as any surgeon could have made it, but still the size of her palm, and then trailed lower to follow the endless circle of the Ouroboros she knew he had only ever seen in a police photograph.

She couldn't answer him, could hardly breath actually, when he placed one warm, dry hand in the center of her back. "You can't hide from me Scully," he continued, sliding his hand firmly up her spine, bringing his other hand into play as he circled her shoulders and pressed his fingers into the knotted muscles of her neck. "I know you; the good, the bad. I know there is no one I'd rather have beside me in a bad situation, in any situation. These are medals of honor."

She huffed her disagreement into the pillow.

"You think I'm silly?" She hummed in agreement. "I'm not silly. These are beautiful Scully, because they're you. They're a testament to your strength and your courage."

"Mulder, you're getting soft."

"Scully, soft is one thing I am definitely not," he said hoarsely after a long pause and she was glad her face was mostly hidden because her cheeks were flaming. Mulders hands continued their slow, firm track over the taut muscles in her back. "Tell me about the autopsy?" he pressed, breaking the awkward pause, and she took a deep breath, collecting her thoughts.

"Isaac Kurtz died the same way Roberts did," she said again, relaxing under the rhythmical movement of his hands. "The corpse was in a mess when I got it but it was clear he'd also been subjected to a blunt force trauma to the chest. The wound was stellate in shape, the edges were ragged where the skin had overstretched and torn under tension, but there was almost no abrasion collar or stippling - it was clearly the result of an extremely high impact blow. The loss of blood was tremendous, and fast. He would've been dead before he hit the -"

She broke off with a barely stifled gasp at the feather-light press of Mulder's lips against her right shoulder blade. Then her left. And then the faint pressure of his nose circling the small mole to the left of her spine.

"Is this ok?" he whispered, barely lifting his mouth from her skin.

"Yeah."

"Go on. I'm listening," he said against the ridged column of her vertebrae.

'Go on'? She could barely remember her name, never mind the autopsy when his teeth were worrying the skin over her tattoo, when his fingers were brushing up and down like feathers over her side.

"Um. I.."

"He was dead before he hit the floor," Mulder supplied helpfully, slowly, painfully slowly, nibbling his way up her back.

"Yes," she mumbled, her mind spinning out of gear. "Yes, he was," she said more firmly, swallowing on a thick throat. "The condition of the body made it... difficult to collect, ah, forensic evidence. There were some fibers I was able to isolate, and uhh," she moaned as Mulder's hot, wet mouth closed over the tiny scar on the back of her neck, teeth biting at the raised tissue, his slippery tongue darting out to salve the hurt. He was straddling her now, resting on the swell of her ass, his hard stomach warm on her back as he leaned over her, hands kneading her shoulders and biceps. Her whole body was pulsing under his touch and she shifted her legs, vainly trying to ease the burn between them.

"Um, there was a fingernail. In the general debris in the body bag, I ... found a female fingernail, torn off from the nail bed," she said with effort, wanting to give him all the facts but at the same time wondering just how fucked up they were that autopsy results were part of foreplay. Mulder's lips closed around her earlobe, his breath hot and echoic in the delicate shell of her ear. "I overnighted it to Quantico, called in some, ah... favors to get it fast- tracked. With any luck, there'll be a hit in CODIS."

"Go you," Mulder mumbled into her ear, and then his tongue was at the base of her neck, circling the ball of her C1 vertebrae, sucking on the knotted bone so hard she knew it would leave a mark. "Could you smell aniseed this time?" 

She shivered as he pressed the flat of his tongue over the smarting skin and then trailed it down her spine. "Yes."

His hands grappled with the robe bunched around her ass and tossed it to the side leaving her naked except for her grey panties. He sat back on his haunches, resting against her thighs, fingers trailing up and down her back. "Because I can smell you," 

"Jesus, Mulder!" she hissed, at once mortified and agonizingly aroused. He shifted above her, raising on his knees and tugging on her shoulder, encouraging her to roll over beneath him.

He looked down at her in the murky lamplight with wonder in his eyes. "Oh, Scully," he whispered, almost reverently, and no man had ever looked at her quite like that before.

She moved her hands to his denim-covered knees, braced on either side of her hips, and pressed her palms flat against the hard muscles on his thighs. His muscles jumped under her hands, and the ridge of his erection bulged unmistakably against his fly. Mulder took a deep breath as she snaked her hands along his thighs, bypassing the part of him she was aching to touch, and worked her fingers under the rumpled hem of his t-shirt.

His belly was warm to touch, dusted with a soft, downy covering of hair that tickled her fingertips.

"Are we really doing this?" 

"I hope so," she said, pushing her hands further up his chest so that his t-shirt bunched over her wrists. God, his skin was so slick. "Because I'm going to be really embarrassed tomorrow if that backrub was only platonic."

"God, Scully," he breathed.

"Take this off," she said tugging at the shirt and he pulled it off swiftly, dropping it on the floor. He was so beautiful; long, lithe limbs, defined musculature, silky cinnamon skin. He was like a study in perfection. 

She lifted her head to kiss him and he sank forward over her, their eyes open as their mouths joined, tongues duelling for control. Scully skimmed her hands over his back, his shoulders; wanting to cover every inch of his skin. Mulder's own hands branded her, grasping and caressing; loving her.

She wasn't sure how long they kiss for but soon he was cradled between her raised thighs, grinding the hard line of his denim-covered cock against the throbbing line of her sex. Her panties were soaked, the front of his jeans damp where he was thrusting against her and she'd had enough, she had to have him inside her. Soon.

Mulder alternated between her breasts, using his hand to massage whichever one was not benefiting from his mouth. He held nothing back, teasing her with his teeth, his tongue, sucking her breast into his mouth until she wanted to scream. "Mulder.." she ground out, tugging his head until he finally, reluctantly released her breast and moved up to sip at the corners of her mouth.

"I want to taste every inch of you," he said, grazing her chin with his teeth and she dug her hands between them, fumbling with his fly.

"Next time," she muttered, looking down to where she her hands were groping fruitlessly at the stiff buttons on his jeans "Just... Mulder... help me," she gasped as he pinched her left nipple hard between his fingers, roughly manipulating the aching flesh.

"What's the hurry?" he asked lazily and she wanted to shake him. Instead, she stopped rooting around at the reluctant fly and slithered her hand down the narrow gap between his belly and his jeans, fingers closing tightly around the thick, hard mass of his penis. He yelped in shock thrusting hard into her hand.

"Muldeeer," she implored, a little desperately, "I. Want. You."

Compliant now she was massaging his cock with her hand, he rolled off her and she grudgingly released him, pulling her hand from his jeans and shucking out of her panties. Mulder kicked his jeans and shorts off, and then he was back, heavy between her legs, trailing a hand over her ass and thigh, pulling her leg around his hip. "Your stomach... Is this okay?"

"Yeah, yeah," she muttered, eyes slipping shut as Mulder's fingers traced the slick outer lips of her sex. Oh God. Oh God. His index finger skittered tentatively over her clit, engorged and emerging from between her swollen labia. She sank her teeth into her lip and took him back in her hand, skimming her fingers and palm over the silken skin of his cock. He was huge in her hand, pulsing with want, and she was done with the touching, the stroking, the slow, slow dance of seduction. She wanted him, now, hard inside her. Filling her. Completing her.

"Please, Mulder, I want.." she said desperately, frantic to get him inside. The maddening little circles his finger made around her throbbing clit were distracting, but not enough to push her off course. Without taking her eyes from his, she pulled his penis towards her, pressing the spongy, flared head of him against her throbbing center. 

Slowly, painstakingly, he filled her, sinking home until they were one. 

And. It. Was. Good.


	6. Chapter 6

J. Edgar Hoover Building, Washington DC, March 10th

"Is he in yet?" Jana Cassidy asked, breezing into Skinner's outer office. His secretary was standing behind her desk, overcoat still buttoned to her chin as she sorted through his mail. She looked up, startled by the unexpected visitor, and a lock of red hair fell over her eyes. She flicked it away with a slight toss of her head.

"Good morning Assistant Director," she said smoothly, setting down her handful of letters and reaching for the intercom, "Let me tell him you're here."

Jana waved her hand and continued past the young woman to grasp the door handle to Walter's office, "No need, it's just a social call."

"Of course, Ma'am," the secretary agreed, pasting a smile on over her mildly peeved face.

The oak veneered door swung heavy and smooth under her touch, and Walter looked up as she entered, blinking in surprise. 

"Jana," he said, rising to his feet, "Everything ok?"

He was so paranoid. And he should really move his desk from in front of the window, the glare on his pate was distracting, poor guy. "Yes, of course. I just thought you'd be interested in a status update on the Chicago case?"

Walter twisted his mouth, glancing furtively around the room. "Not here," he said briskly. He grabbed a stack of files from his desk, and then with a tempered tone, added "We'll go get a coffee. Let me just give these files to Kimberly."

Jana followed him out, waiting while he handed over the stack with a terse list of instructions which he rounded off with an incongruously soft, "Is that okay?"

"Yes Sir, I'll get right on it."

Kimberly Cook was undoubtedly efficient, and yet her efficiency was undoubtedly not the reason Walter had hired her. Petite, with bobbed red hair, there was something across the cheekbones reminding Jana, indeed anyone who gave it any thought, of Agent Scully. Even her eyes were a similar pale blue; incisive, intelligent, and yet unguarded in a way that Agent Scully's never were. She wondered if it had been a conscious decision on Walter's part, or if he were unaware of just what his choice in secretaries alluded to.

"Why didn't you want to talk in your office," she asked lightly, as they made their way to the cart on the 4th floor that sold over-priced, under-caffeinated sludge to the truly desperate.

Walter looked down at her with raised eyebrows and she laughed, "Oh, Walter, you don't honestly think someone's bugging your office? You're an Assistant Director of the FBI!"

"Jana, I've stopped being surprised about what people will do," he said, and the resignation in his tone pulled her up short. He rolled off his coffee order to the pasty young barista and gestured for her to do the same. "What did you have to tell me?" he asked, conciliatory, while they waited for their coffee.

"There's been another murder in Chicago. Tuesday night, same MO. Agent Scully carried out the autopsy yesterday and found a fingernail likely belonging to the perpetrator. She sent it to Quantico for analysis."

They accepted their coffee and began a slow walk back towards the exec offices on the 5th floor. As the clock edged toward seven, the Hoover Building began to fill up; eight thousand agents and ancillary staff making their way to the enormous carbuncle between Pennsylvania Avenue, 9th, 10th and E Streets.

"That their only lead?"

"They believe they're looking for a female unsub, early thirties, blonde hair, petite build. There are some poor quality images from a security camera."

"A woman?"

Jana nodded in agreement, having been equally as shocked to learn of the development when she'd telephoned Agent Scully for a status report half an hour previously. "Apparently Agent Mulder encountered her in a bar on Tuesday night, before the second murder; he believes it's where she trolls for victims. They're working with Chicago PD to launch a surveillance operation tonight."

Walter took several sips from his coffee, digesting the information, and Jana had the feeling there was something he was holding back. It was the same feeling she'd gotten standing on Michigan Avenue the previous Sunday, when he'd asked her help in getting Scully and Mulder assigned to a case outside of Kersh's Domestic Terrorism remit. And lo and behold, that same night, Kurt Robert's had turned up dead.

"Walter, if there's something else about this case...?" she prompted, having been an Assistant Director for too long not to question when something felt wrong.

"What do you mean?"

"Well, it just seems strange, you asked for my help Sunday afternoon to get Mulder and Scully some work outside DT, and then this turns up."

"You don't believe in coincidence, Jana?" he said, and it was hard to tell if he was smirking.

"Not these days," she said flatly, "You never really explained why you wanted them out from under Kersh."

Tossing his spent cup in a trashcan, he turned to face her, hands on his hips. The reflection of his broad shoulders cast a shadow over a framed facsimile of the Constitution. "Agents Mulder and Scully are worth more than the grunt work Kersh send them on. It's a waste of resource."

"A waste of..?" she stuttered incredulously. "What the hell would you call the X-Files? They've been down in that basement, the two of them, working on God knows what, wasting money for years. And that debacle in Dallas last summer - it was an embarrassment to the Bureau."

"It was a goddamn cover-up Jana, and you were all too damn blind to see it."

"Now hang on there -"

"Jana," he interrupted, and seeing that passers-by were eyeing them curiously, he cupped her elbow and encouraged her to walk with him again. When he spoke again, his voice was quieter, "Jana, things have happened that you have no idea about, things you wouldn't believe or understand. But it's a waste of their experience and skills having them run background checks. It's an insult."

"It's a punishment," she said with emphasis.

"You don't believe they were responsible for what happened in Dallas any more than I do."

"They broke protocol, Walter. They were out of control, and they were acting in a way that was injurious to the Bureau and injurious to themselves." 

She could see he didn't like hearing this, and honestly, there was a part of her that had some sympathy for the renegade agents. Beneath the veneer of their fantastic tales, was an obvious and unshakable sense of moral certainty. She could not argue with their dedication to one another, or what they believed to be the truth: only the way they went about proving it.

"I understand you feel a certain responsibility toward them Walter, it's why I agreed to help attach them to a case outside Domestic Terrorism. I'm just concerned I don't have all the facts."

"You have all the facts you need Jana," he said, frank and tired, as they reached the door to his outer office. She looked up into his lined face, noting so many more than there had been just a year or two ago. He put a hand on her shoulder, intending to reassure her. "I wouldn't betray your friendship by putting you in an awkward position."

She did not mention that she feared he already had, saying instead, "I'll keep you abreast of developments."

"Thank you," he said, and she watched him, this man with motives she could not fathom, walk back into his unsecure office with his poor man's Scully and the weight of the world on his shoulders. ***

Warehouse 981, W 16th Street, Chicago

"Hey, Santa. Got a weird print off the staircase over here," called Ling Elliot, one of the crime scene techs as he scouted out the CSI team's progress.

Kryngold looked over to see the petite woman crouched down at the bottom of the stairs in a white boiler suit, a brush in one hand and a tub of lycopodium powder in the other.

"Yeah," she said with a smirk when he jerked his head in question, "It looks... ass shaped."

"Funny," he said humorlessly, moving away from the stacked boxes of cheap Korean Barbie knock-offs to peer down at the pretty fingerprint specialist. Ling had been with the PD for almost as long as Kryngold had, and she'd been a friend to him during his divorce three years previously. A mother of three, her husband was a detective with Narcotics and the Elliots had managed to achieve the holy grail of police work: a rock solid marriage and a happy family. Kryngold wondered if the difference was having a partner who understood the demands of the job, something he himself had never experienced.

"You get anything other than an outline of my butt?" he asked, sucking down the last of the redeye special Libby had fixed him at the diner. The bitterness of the coffee seemed to be exacerbated by its tepidness and his tongue cringed with the acridity. 

"It's such a nice butt," she said, rising slowly to a standing position, knees popping. "We got over four hundred prints and counting; it'll take a while to process. Harry's upstairs in the office. Serology's gonna be working overtime tonight too."

"Really? Blood?" 

Ling wrinkled her nose. "Nothing so chaste. The desk and chair lit up like a Christmas tree when they got the CrimeScope out. I heard there was quite an impressive arc over the window shade too."

Kryngold's stomach churned in disgust. "Am I okay to go up?"

"Knock yourself out," she said, "Just don't touch anything marked with a blue dot; it hasn't been processed yet."

"Ling, I don't want to touch anything in this shithole, period," he said, trudging up the stairs.

In the office on the second floor, Harry Walker, Chicago PD's veteran serologist, was excising tiny squares of fabric from the desk chair with a scalpel. Harry had written four textbooks on how to identify semen and blood at crime scenes, and despite being older than Methuselah, with his Jack Nicholson looks, he was a real silver fox with the ladies. Kryngold was in awe of the guy.

"Hey Harry," he said by way of greeting and Harry looked up from his crouched position by the chair.

"Hey Santa. Real piece of work you got here."

"Ling mentioned there'd been a few deposits."

"Oh your boy's a serial spunker."

"You Luminol-ed yet?"

Harry bagged the last square of fabric and scrawled with a Sharpie on the bag. "No, just wanted to get the last couple of samples for the RSID strip and PCR testing before we sprayed." He tossed the evidence bag in a large brown sack with the other samples, and moved over to a heavy black case on the floor, which held his crime scene kit. "I'm going to mix the solution now," he said, pulling out two Ziploc bags of prepared Luminol powder and sodium carbonate, and a half-liter of distilled water.

"'Morning Detective."

Kryngold turned to find Agents Mulder and Scully in the doorway. "Agents. Good of you to join us," he said baldly, even though it was barely 7.30am and they couldn't really be construed as being late.

"How's it going?" Scully asked, glancing around the dank office as she stepped over the threshold. She looked tired, more so than on the previous two occasions he'd met her, and she tucked her hands in her pant pockets, camel coat held back by her arms. She was wearing dark slacks and a soft looking black wool turtleneck; more casual than the suits he'd seen her in before, and more feminine. But something in her eyes told him the biggest mistake anyone could make would be to underestimate Dana Scully.

"A whole load of fingerprints to analyze, and various bodily fluids." He gestured towards Harry, who was shaking his Luminol solution and eyeing Scully like a dog at a butcher's window. "This is Harry Walker, our lead serologist. Harry, this is Special Agent Dana Scully and her partner, Fox Mulder. With the FBI."

"*The* Harry Walker?" Scully said with interest, and Harry flashed his rack of unnaturally white teeth.

"The one and only."

Scully looked impressed, and a little star-struck. "Mr Walker pioneered the use of fluorescein in detecting latent blood stains," she explained to her partner, who looked vaguely amused to see his partner's reaction. 

"Well I can't take all the credit," Harry demurred, insincerely, "Rob was the real brains behind it."

"Have you done a sensitivity comparison with Luminol? My preliminary experiences with fluorescein as an indicator suggest it's significantly more receptive. Especially in conjunction with a thickener." "Agent Scully is a forensic pathologist," Kryngold explained. 

Harry looked like he'd died and gone to hot-geek heaven. 

"Actually it's something we're running a study on right now," he said, "Without the empirical evidence, a lot of Police Departments are reluctant to make the shift. Hence, we still use Luminol here in Chicago."

Shaking his head, Kryngold caught Mulder's eye and cocked his head toward the hallway. 

"There's no sign yet of anything the killer could've left behind," he said as they both stood in the hall, illuminated brightly by industrial lighting brought in by the crime scene techs. 

"Scully found a fingernail in her autopsy yesterday. She sent it to Quantico," Mulder supplied, looking into the office where Scully and Harry were talking in a language Kryngold didn't understand. 

"That's great," he said enthusiastically. It was the first break they'd gotten, or would be if they could get a DNA match. "Listen, on this black magic angle. I did a bit of digging, and -"

"Mulder!" Scully called and they both turned to look. She was crouched by the desk, snapping on a latex glove. Harry watched her curiously, looking like he too had been interrupted mid-flow.

"What is it?" Mulder asked. Scully dug her hand under the flat leg of the desk, wiggling her index finger until she dislodged something, which she picked up carefully and held out in the palm of her hand.

It was a silver hooked earring, a round circle of about a third of an inch in diameter, etched with some kind of repeating pattern. In the center was a tiny turquoise bead.

Mulder cupped his hand under Scully's, drawing it closer to his face so he could see it better.

"Doesn't seem like Kurtz's style," Kryngold remarked.

"It's Mayan. The markings, the materials," Mulder said, still holding Scully's hand, twisting it so he could get a better look at the earring. "Can we get it printed?"

"It's going to be a hard surface to get a print off, but we can try," Scully observed.

Kryngold leaned out the door and called for Ling to come up. "If anyone can get a print, Ling can."

"Oh sure, set me up to fail," the Asian woman said, coming in the room with her kit. Pulling on a fresh pair of gloves, she took the earring carefully from Scully. "I can't use powder on this, it'll never lift. Let's take it back to the lab and try cyanoacrylic."

"Good catch, Agent Scully," Kryngold said, and her face was marginally less severe than it usually was as she pulled off her gloves.

"Are you going back to the station now, Detective? We could use a desk and a phone for a couple of hours."

"Harry, you need us for anything?" 

"I'll catch up with you this afternoon," Harry said, smiling beguilingly at Scully. She smiled politely back.

"Saddle up then Agents. Let's get this show on the road."

***

Chicago PD, Area 3 Detective Division

The morning and half the afternoon passed in a monotonous segue of paperwork, background checks and chasing Quantico for results. If Scully had realized that ninety percent of an FBI agent's job was paperwork, she might have stayed in medicine, where the figure had been a marginally less mind-numbing seventy-five percent.

With the death of Isaac Kurtz, their investigation had been upgraded in priority, which in Chicago meant only that they were able to commandeer one of the meeting rooms around the edge of the open plan Homicide Division, instead of spreading their paperwork across Kryngold's already overloaded desk. 

A conference table dominated the tired room, and a lone window overlooked the parking lot and North Western Avenue beyond. Around the walls, Mulder and Kryngold had tacked crime scene photos from the two murders, and the enlarged, enhanced headshot from the camera at the Zoo, which had finally come back from the Field Office that morning. 

The perpetrator was indeed a female: in her early-thirties, petite and fair-haired; with a passing glance, it could be Scully in the blurred photo.

At lunch, Harry Walker had joined them over sandwiches from Jimmy John's to go over the preliminary forensic results from the warehouse. The serologist was well intentioned, if a little randy, and his forensic skills and team were second to none. In all, four hundred and seventy eight fingerprints had been lifted from the warehouse. The lab had processed three quarters of them and found seventeen distinct prints including Kurtz, his business partner and Brian Delray. After a couple of hours in the cyanoacrylic tank, Ling Elliot had managed to lift a print from the earring. No one had been surprised to find there was no match in either Chicago PD or the Bureau's database, but the same print was identified on the underside of the desk in the office, and on the bannister of the staircase.

Quantico had returned the results on the fingernail, confirming the owner was female, but again finding no match in any of the databases. It was yet another example of forensics being useful only when you had a suspect in mind already.

Scully tossed her reading glasses on the unhelpful toxicology report from the Roberts autopsy and looked over to the other side of the table where Mulder and Kryngold were debating the merits of Mulder's Mayan theory.

"Wait, wait. Back up a minute," Kryngold said, rocking back in his creaky conference chair. "Run that last part by me again, about transubstantiation."

Scully watched the expressions passing across his face as Mulder explained the supposed origins and meaning of human sacrifices in the Mayan culture. Kryngold was attractive enough in a former college-footballer kind of way, and in contrast to many of the local law enforcement they encountered, he was willing to listen to theories outside the usual sphere of inquiry. And for his part, Mulder seemed pleased to have someone new to show off to.

"But I see no evidence of these murders bearing the hallmarks of a typical sacrifice. The Mayans were much less prolific than neighboring civilizations, preferring bloodletting over human sacrifice. In fact the extent of bloodletting in Mayan society was so pronounced it's now considered a unique aspect of the pre-Columbian Mesoamerican culture," he lectured, waving a chewed No. 2 pencil around like a pointer. "The key characteristic of a sacrifice was the removal of the heart. Agent Scully will confirm the hearts in both these cases were, if not intact, still present in the body."

Kryngold glanced at her, looking a little like he wished he hadn't brought the subject of a black magic angle up, and she nodded her agreement. "I found sections of the left ventricle in the autopsy of Kurt Roberts and part of Isaac Kurtz's atrioventricular valve. If the hearts had been removed as part of some kind of ritual sacrifice, the hearts would have been removed intact - and I see no way that could've happened given the force of the blow."

"So if it's not a sacrifice, what are you saying?" Kryngold asked Mulder, running his hand through his hair in frustration.

"I think that the killer is righting a wrong. One subset of the Mayans, the Ixpiyacocians, believed they could summon the strength and power of their ancestors, and assume that power to divine and discharge the Gods' will. I'm not sure she sets out to kill these men - maybe she's looking for something, fulfilment of some kind. She attracts the men, they have sex and when it's over, she's disappointed."

"Puts a new spin on bunny-boiler, doesn't it," Kryngold said, shaking his head as he digested the theory. He looked over at Scully, "His ideas always this wild?"

She allowed a small smile, glancing at Mulder as he waited for her response. "Mulder's never been afraid to think outside the box."

"Scully, all these years...you still think my ideas are out there?" he said, feigning umbrage.

"I think your ideas can lack scientific foundation, but they fall a little way from the Karman line."

Mulder looked at her, soaking up the contours of her face, and something about the slight narrowing of his eyes and the way he pursed his lips around the soggy pencil he was gnawing on, told her he was thinking about the night before. He'd being doing it all day; subtle glances to see what her reaction was, and yet now he was observing her openly. Anticipation tickled the skin on her chest and she was aware of Kryngold watching them curiously. She dropped her eyes away from Mulder's gaze to look at the toxicology report; shuffling the sheets aimlessly, feeling the tension in the room growing. 

"You want coffee?" Mulder asked eventually, putting an end to the pregnant silence as he leaned back in his chair with his arms extended above his head in a much-needed stretch. 

Scully wasn't sure which would protest more at yet another cup of coffee, her bladder or her stomach, but she was sick of the sight of the four bland walls of the conference room, and it was only thirty minutes until the 3pm briefing for the officers involved in the evening's surveillance operation at Espionage.

"I wouldn't mind stretching my legs."

"Kryngold, get you anything?"

The detective hauled himself to his feet with a groan, "Nah, I'm gonna check in on a few of my other cases before the briefing. Make sure they haven't all gone to Hell in a hand basket."

They filed out of the room, Kryngold peeling off to go visit his answerphone, and Mulder and Scully heading to the coffee area down the hall.

Mulder sighed, looking at the two machines, one soda, one a generic instant coffee machine offering an array of watered down beverages. He dug in his pants pocket, sorting through the change for four quarters. "What d'you want?" he asked, shoving the coins in the slot and thumbing the button for a Coke.

"Just water," she said, and he rolled his eyes like it was a sin to pay 50 cents for something she could get from the fountain for free. "You want to get some fresh air?" Mulder asked, drinks in hand, tilting his head toward the fire exit, and she nodded, following him out onto a redbrick veranda littered with cigarette butts.

It was cold outside, not much above forty as the sun began its slow slide behind the utilitarian grey tower of Silent Co-operative Apartments, a block to the west of the police department. An assisted living facility for senior citizens with disabilities, she was sure it was nice enough inside, but outside it was a depressing monstrosity that made her fear old age.

They stood side by side facing the parking lot, close enough that she could feel his body heat radiating through the thin wool of her sweater.

"Scully," he said, plucking the tab on his soda with his fingernail, but leaving it unopened. "You can't be in the club tonight."

"What do you mean?"

"The other night, in the club, a woman came onto me. I think it was the killer."

"I don't understand," she said frowning. Mulder rubbed at the skin of his neck with his left index finger in a gesture that she recognized immediately. He felt guilty. 

"Before you arrived, a woman who looked like the woman in that headshot, who matched the description we've since gotten from Brian Delray, offered to buy me a drink. She was very... seductive," he explained, looking uncomfortable.

"Why didn't you say something?"

"What was I supposed to say? I had no idea who she was; she was just some random woman trying to pick me up and it didn't seem important at the time."

Scully ran her tongue over the leading edge of her front teeth, not quite sure what to say. It might not have seemed important at the time, but at some point in the past two days, it had become important - and Mulder still hadn't said anything.

"I thought we were past this," she said quietly, surprising herself by saying it out loud. She had genuinely thought after the previous summer, after what had happened to her in New York, that they were past keeping secrets from one another. She turned away from him and rested her elbows on the iron railing that edged the veranda. It had been painted black at one point, and the little paint that hadn't peeled away had faded to a dull grey.

"Scully, I didn't keep it from you on purpose; it just didn't come up. I don't know what else you want me to say." Mulder tossed his unopened Coke in the trashcan by the fire exit and put his hands on his hips, sighing. His petulant impatience raised her own ire. 

"Dammit Mulder, if it had been me in that club, and the killer had approached me and then later I'd realized it, don't you think I might have thought it pertinent to share that information with you? With my partner?" she asked as she turned her head to look at him for a moment, searching his face for some kind of an answer. But he was watching her with the same bland expression he always had. She turned away to look out over the parking lot again.

A long moment passed, and she could feel his eyes on her face.

"I'm sorry," he said gently.

She knew he was waiting for her to say that it was okay, she understood. But she couldn't. She didn't. His secretiveness was the one thing that always came between them.

"Scully," he pressed, "I should've told you. It was stupid not to." He reached for her hand and his skin was cold from holding the icy soda, "But if she saw you with me the other night -"

"I know," she cut him off. She knew that if she joined Mulder in the club tonight she would deter the killer, and if the killer spotted her elsewhere in the club, it would look suspicious that she *wasn't* with Mulder. 

But the prospect of him being in the line of fire on his own while she twiddled her thumbs in the surveillance van put her nerves on edge and her anger at his omission dwindled in the face of it. She knew Mulder could sense her apprehension. "I know," she said again, more softly, not wanting to be at odds with him.

He reached for her, pulling her into an embrace; an innocent gesture and something he'd done before they were lovers. But now it felt different, improper somehow when they were at work, and she held herself rigid in his arms, unable to relax. "I'll be fine," he murmured into her hair and his huge hands spanned the narrow plane of her back.

She hoped that were true, but she dared not say she was sure he would be. Too much had happened to both of them in the past for that to be a given. 

"Scully?" he pulled back to look down at her, sensing her reticence. "Is there something else?" 

"What do you mean?"

"Do you regret...?"

She shook her head and stepped back from him, grabbing onto the freezing railing like she would fall down without the support. Regret over their relationship was furthest from her mind and the realization she was making Mulder doubt her commitment made her throat ache with unshed tears 

"I -" she faltered, a band of panic tightening around her chest, and for once she was grateful that Mulder could see right through her. He slid a hand around her waist, pulling her back against him and this time she let him, leaning into the warmth of his chest.

Mulder pressed his mouth against her ear, "Tell me, Scully." 

She rubbed her nose against his chest, and then leaned back to look at him. "I'm not good at saying what's in my heart. But you... are very dear to me," she said haltingly. "I can't lose you, Mulder."

"I'm not going anywhere," he said, a hint of a smile on his face as he tried to reassure her. "And the feeling's pretty mutual, Scully. I just think it's going to take us both time to adjust."

She nodded and took several deep breaths through her nose, feeling a lightening in her chest after her confession. It was absurd that she should feel this nervousness around him, when he had been her best friend for so long, and when he himself seemed so at ease with the transition in their relationship. 

Mulder brushed a strand of too short hair from her face, rubbing his thumb over the skin in front of her ear.

"I really want to kiss you right now," he confessed fondly and Scully ducked her head, both liking his words and embarrassed by his candor. He edged his free hand under the hem of her sweater, scratching the inked skin of her lower back with his index finger. 

"Mulder," she warned; though the way she leaned into his touch took the teeth out of her reprimand.

He gave her waist a reluctant squeeze and removed his hand from beneath her sweater, letting out a muted sigh, "The sooner we wrap this case up the better."

She offered a small smile of agreement. "Come on, we're going to be late for the briefing."

***

Holiday Inn Downtown, Chicago

Scully opened the door to him wearing a tense expression and casual clothes. She gestured him in with an uncapped mascara wand and returned to her place in front of the mirror while he hovered near the television awkwardly.

"The rest of the fingerprints from the warehouse were a bust," Mulder said, watching as she applied smooth, even strokes of mascara to her eyelashes, tilting her head for a better angle. His ex-wife and the few girlfriends he'd had since college had been unable to apply mascara without forming a little 'o' with their mouth, like they were blowing a smoke ring, but Scully's mouth remained firmly shut.

"Generally," he amended. "They did pick up a fairly recent partial thumbprint from one Jarred Pinto, a small time con wanted for, among other things, the caption and asportation of seven Rhode Island Reds from a backyard in Palos Heights last summer. Word on the street was that Pinto was dead, but this print seems to suggest otherwise. No evidence of the purloined poultry was found on the premises, though." 

Scully's amused eyes flickered briefly toward him in the mirror as she twisted the cap off a lipstick but he could tell by the set of her shoulders that she was still apprehensive about the evening ahead. He walked up behind her as she swiped the rust colored stick across her lips and then pawed through the contents of her bag until she found another tube, this one containing a clear liquid, which she dabbed on her lips. It was strangely intimate watching her perform these rituals, to which he had never been privy before.

She removed her earrings, simple studs, from a small wooden box on the dresser, tilting her head first to the left, and then the right, as she inserted them. Mulder rested his hands on her shoulders, feeling the flex of muscle beneath the wool of her button-up sweater as she manipulated the earrings. He pressed a kiss to her temple, and tried not to be too obvious when he inhaled her clean, soapy smell.

"You ok?" he asked, finding her eyes in the mirror. She nodded, fixing the butterfly on her right earring and then sliding her hands over his on her shoulders.

"I just hate it when someone else gets your back."

"Scully, you *do* have my back. I'm wired for sound and you're gonna be right outside watching the feed from the security cameras. What can go wrong?"

Her left eyebrow flickered ironically but after a beat she leaned back against him, letting out a long breath. Her eyelids closed in an expression of contentment, and when she opened them again, it seemed like her pupils filled her whole eyes, the iris reduced to a thin band of blue.

"This feels strange," she confided, though she didn't sound overly concerned.

He hummed in agreement and ran his nose around the curve of her ear. "I always thought it would be easier after we slept together, but I was having flashbacks all day."

She weaved on her feet in front of him, seemingly stirred by his words and the implication that he was just as awed by this change in their relationship as she was. "You make it sound traumatic."

"It was. I think I need to do it again, build up a tolerance."

"Mulder," she remonstrated, "We need to keep our heads about us right now."

He pressed his mouth against the pulse point beneath her ear, worrying it with his teeth, enjoying the fresh, spicy taste of her, "My head is about me."

"Mulder..." Scully protested weakly, but to his ears it sounded more like a supplication. His hands drifted from her shoulders, over the enticing swell of her breasts to her waist. He slid his fingers under her sweater to skitter over her stomach and glanced up at their reflection in the mirror. Scully's eyes were closed, a faint line of concentration deepening the crease of skin between her eyebrows, which had become a permanent feature these past few years. Two spots of color tainted the creamy skin of her cheeks, and he watched himself in reflection, the pale grey yarn of her sweater bunching around his wrist as circled the puckered wound to the left of her bellybutton and edged his fingers north, to the underside of her breasts.

"Let me make you feel good," he whispered, feeling crass even as the words left his mouth. Her eyes snapped open and for a split second, he was sure she was going to push him away and tell him to get his act together. But then she spun round in his arms and her fingers were sliding through the hair on the back of his head. 

Mulder gripped her around the waist, boosting her onto the dresser top and scattering make-up tubes onto the floor. Scully spread her thighs to make room for him and he inched forward, giddy eagerness plucking at his gut as his mouth neared hers and her lips parted in anticipation. Had it really been less than twenty-four hours since they did this? It seemed like a lifetime since she'd pressed her mouth against his; and yet with the first moist nip of her lips, the first warm, wet slip of her tongue in his mouth, it was as if no time had passed at all. As if this is what they had always done.

After a few moments, Scully dragged her mouth away, breathing raggedly, "I need to be at the club in forty minutes."

"I can be fast," he said, pulling her sweater off and tossing it on the floor and reaching for the button on her slacks.

"You know, Mulder, some women wouldn't find that much of a turn- ohh God" she groaned, letting her head droop forward onto his shoulder as he dug his hand into her panties and slid his finger into the slick cleft of her sex. Jesus, she was hot. The heat of her singed his hand.

"You've never been most women," he said as he worked her, dipping his finger into her slippery core and pulling the moisture out to coat her clit. 

Getting over the initial shock factor, Scully moved her unsteady hands to his belt, tugging the stiff black leather through the buckle and then attacking his fly. "Shut up, Mulder," she urged breathlessly, seeking his mouth with hers, and he smiled against her lips, enjoying the feel of her knuckles rubbing his erection through his slacks as she worked the zipper. 

Sitting her on the dresser had really been an inspired move, he thought, as he tugged her slacks and panties over her hips without having to release her mouth or getting a crick in his neck. She wriggled to help him and then her two efficient little hands were around his hips, pulling him closer into the warm embrace of her thighs, the dripping heat of her body.

Mulder bit the inside of his cheek hard as his balls tensed with the sweetness of it; when he'd said he could be fast, he hadn't intended to be embarrassingly so. Scully raked her fingernails up and down his spine, toes curled into the back of his thighs as she met him thrust for thrust. He slipped a hand between them, seeking out her dampened clitoris and tried to hit a rhythm in time with his thrusts. The concentration required stayed his impending humiliation, but the breathy little sighs and moans Scully was gasping against his neck were still beyond distracting. "Are you close?"

She pulled her mouth away from his neck long enough to mutter a response. "Mmm, 's ok, it's good." 

"I want you to come," Mulder hissed as her sharp little teeth returned to the overwrought tendons of his neck. He squeezed his eyes shut, fisting his spare hand in her hair while his body continued to pound into her unchecked. She shifted her legs, moving her thighs further up his hips, and he sank inside just a little deeper. Mulder groaned in desperation, feeling his orgasm welling up inside. He circled her clit harder, grinding the bloated nub under the pad of his thumb, desperately wanting to bring her with him and yet knowing it was unlikely. Scully bit into the raspy skin over his jugular, and it was just enough to push him over the edge. With a ragged exhalation, he came. 

"I'm sorry," he said, pressing sweaty kisses against the corner of her mouth, her cheek, as his heart rate began to descend into the normal range. 

"Don't be ridiculous," Scully said honestly, rubbing her hands over his back soothingly, even as her pussy clenched erratically around his shrinking cock. She leaned back slightly to blow over his sweaty temple, and the gesture made his heart ache happily. 

He brushed a kiss against her mouth and dropped to his knees, feeling faintly ridiculous with his pants bunched around his ankles and his penis slapping stickily off his thigh.

"Mulder..?" she said anxiously, moving to push him away as he wedged his hands under her ass and pulled her to the edge of the bureau, and then letting her head drop back against the mirror with a crack when he sucked her clit into his mouth without preamble, feeling their combined juices coating his chin.

Under the pungent, bleachy taste of his own seed, he could detect a hint of her flavor, rich and heady, and he wanted more; he wanted to swipe the flat of his tongue over her from top to bottom, to dig his tongue inside her and rub his nose over her swollen clit. But as he started to loosen his suction, her left hand flew to the back of his head, her fingers digging into his hair and her thighs tensed around his head.

"Don't stop," she breathed, "Please don't stop." 

Pursing his lips around her, he sucked hard. Harder than he meant to, and harder than he could've imagined she would enjoy. She jerked violently against his face, her fingers digging into his scalp almost painfully, and a strangled cry was wrenched from her throat. 

"I love you," she choked out, a bit like she was coughing up a fur ball, and it was about the sweetest thing he'd ever heard.


	7. Chapter 7

Old Town, Chicago

"Celia? S'that you carino?"

"Yes, Abuela."

The air was scented with vanilla and coffee and an underlying whiff of furniture wax, the kind that came in the tin with the top-hat wearing dog embossed on it. The kind Abuela had always used; the kind Abuela's own mother had used, and her mother before her - and on and on back through the generations of Flores women until the days when they made their own polish with beeswax and jojoba oil, and furniture apparently looked all the better for it. 

Abuela's cane rasped on the ceramic tiles in the kitchen, her heavy soled shoes shuffling on the polished floor. "Did you bring the lemons?"

Celia hung her coat on the worn peg by the front door and unwrapped her scarf. Her fingers were numb and unwilling from the cold, "Yes, Abuela."

A huff and a scuffle drifted down the hallway, "I hope you pick the good ones this time, carino."

Celia tucked her gloves and scarf in the hood of her coat and smiling, she stooped to collect the bag of groceries from the floor. "I picked good ones this time, Abuela. The best."

"I hope so. The last ones - ugh so bitter. And hard like little yellow marble."

"These are good lemons," she reassured, entering the warm little kitchen and setting the bag on the counter. Her grandmother's nose twitched doubtfully, but the old woman held her tongue and pulled two mugs from the shelf above the kettle. 

"I have fresh coffee on the stove. You have some; warm up from outside."

"Please," Celia agreed, beginning to unpack the groceries. This small duplex where she had grown up, with its familiar smells and rag-washed buttermilk walls, always felt like home. Whatever else was going on in her life, she knew she could come to Abuela's house, hang her coat in the hall and find comfort and love in the kitchen.

"I made Sopa de Garbanzo today, you want?" the old woman said, fixing the coffees with cream and sugar, even though Celia had taken it black since she was in high school.

"I'm ok thanks," she said, accepting the sickly sweet coffee and holding the warm mug against her face. 

"You need more meat on your bones," Abuela observed without malice, ladling a healthy serving of soup into a patterned bowl. She shuffled over to the table and deposited it unceremoniously in front of Celia. "Eat," she ordered, sinking into one of the mismatched chairs with a grunt.

Steam wafted past her face, oregano and the fruitiness of the ancho chillies. It did smell good, and slowly, Celia set down her coffee and picked up the spoon, dipping it into the bowl. The spicy soup was comforting as it filled her belly, and she realized it was the first thing she'd eaten in days. 

"You look tired, carino," her grandmother observed, brushing a lock of blonde hair from Celia's eyes with an arthritic forefinger. Cloudy brown eyes, the color of the milky coffee, watched her carefully.

"I'm ok," she said, forcing a smile that felt false and brittle, "Work is busy, you know?"

"You do too much, carino," her grandmother said softly, clasping her gnarled hands around the worn top of her walking cane. The bottom of the stick scraped against the floor between her feet and the old woman cocked her head as she considered her granddaughter. Loose grey hairs spilled from the clips holding her bun in place and though her careworn face lacked the lustre of her youth, the creases came from a lifetime of laughter. When Celia looked up into her eyes, she saw a woman looking back at her with love and affection.

"I'm..." What? She didn't know the words to explain what she was right now. Confused? Scared? Caught up in the momentum of a really horrible situation? "It's been a strange week," she said instead, which was really the most feeble way of describing what kind of a week it had been.

"This is good," she deflected after a beat, reaching for the saltshaker with her right hand. She regretted the move the instant her fingers closed around the jar.

"What's wrong with your hand?"

"What? Nothing."

Quicker than a woman with arthritis should, her grandmother reached out and grabbed her wrist, pulling the bandaged index finger closer to her glaucomic eyes. 

"It look like more than nothing."

"I caught it in the door," Celia said, pulling her hand free and tucking it back under the table out of sight. The burn of embarrassment spread across her chest.

Her grandmother's hands returned to the top of her cane and Celia turned back to her soup, forcing the scalding liquid past the lump in her throat.

"If you're in trouble, carino, you can tell me."

Oh but she wished that were true. She wished that she could tell her grandmother about the last few months. About the dreams and the urges. About the sensation of being both completely in control and yet unable to stop herself.

But her grandmother couldn't help her. She couldn't bring those men back to life, or put out the fire burning inside her that she couldn't contain. Telling Abuela would only spread the burden, not ease it, and Celia could not do that to this kind and gentle woman.

"I know, Abuela," she whispered, looking down at her soup so the old woman wouldn't see the tears in her eyes. Or what was left of her soul. 

***

North Astor Street, Chicago

Kryngold ambled casually down the sidewalk, affecting the air of a man who was heading home after a relaxed few drinks at a hip club; it was a tall order considering he hadn't been that man in almost a decade. The brisk wind chilled the sweat on the back of his neck and he looked forward to the comparative warmth of the surveillance van. A hundred yards down the road from Espionage, between an apartment block and a well-maintained Victorian house, was an alleyway wide enough to wedge the dark grey Dodge Ram they'd borrowed from the FBI Field Office.

Casting a quick glance around him, he dodged down the side of the van, sucking in his gut as he eased past, and rapped on the rear door. Mike Buchanan, a communications specialist attached to 3rd Division swung open the door, holding it open while Kryngold climbed into the compact operations center.

"Nice moves Santa, you been watching Saturday Night Fever again?" Buchanan asked as he closed the door and resettled himself in one of the three swivel chairs bolted to the floor of the van. Agent Scully occupied the second seat, huddled around a coffee cup for warmth, letting go only to tap the cursor keys to swap between cameras.

"Fuck you," he sniffed, settling into the third seat and eyeing the four 12-inch monitors bolted to the wall. "Anything?"

Scully's eyes flickered to him and then back to the screens. "Nothing," she declared, and then pressing the talk button on her headset, she said, "Position 5, our visual on you has been compromised, can you move to the left please?" There was no verbal response from Position 5, an officer from Narcotics working overtime, but within seconds he shifted subtly to the left and reappeared on the video feed covering the VIP area. He was talking animatedly with a top-heavy brunette who was demonstrably not their suspect.

"You think she's going to show tonight?" Buchanan asked, North Face jacket zipped up to his chin as he waved an aluminum flask towards Kryngold. The van's ancillary power unit was only enough to supply the surveillance equipment; heat was considered both an unnecessary luxury and a potential hazard: it was hard to make heat without making noise, and risk drawing attention to the van. 

"There's still another hour before the club closes." Kryngold accepted the flask and pulled a buff plastic cup from a cellophane wrap under the desk. He balanced it between his knees while he filled it with steaming coffee. It tasted remarkably good, definitely not from the office carafe, and he cupped it gratefully between frozen hands under his chin and felt the steam condense slightly on his face. 

Beside him, Scully watched the monitors intently, sharp eyes keenly absorbing every grainy detail. Four small spotlights lit the van, one over each workstation and the forth illuminating the grey metal cabinet, sometimes used to house rifles and Kevlar vests, but sitting empty tonight. The spot over Scully made her hair gleam fox-red and cast shadows under the smooth sweep of her cheekbones. He let his eyes wander over her serious face, the ever so slightly prominent rim of her upper lip, the crooked angle of her proud nose. And yet it all fit together quite pleasingly.

"How's Agent Mulder getting on?"

"He's ok," she said nodding towards the third screen, where Mulder was leaning against the bar, stirring the ice in his glass. Kryngold noticed that while she was watching all of the screens carefully, her eyes returned to the scope of her partner more frequently than the others.

"You been partners long?" he asked conversationally just as Buchanan excused himself to take a leak and exited the van, letting a cold plume of air blast through the cabin. 

"Six years."

He whistled. "You must have a high tolerance for BS to put up with him that long."

"We've had out moments," she said, allowing a tiny smile of nostalgia, and he thought how much prettier she looked without the usual solemn expression. "What about you, Detective, don't you have a partner?"

"No one in Chicago PD has the patience you do," he said ruefully, and took a few scalding sips of coffee. "That's a long time though, isn't it? Six years."

She shrugged and he got the impression she wasn't much for conversation. Or maybe just conversation about Mulder. 

"So how'd a doctor end up at the FBI?" he asked, changing the subject and blowing over the top of his coffee.

She paused, not taking her eyes off the displays, before she observed, "You ask a lot of questions, Detective."

"I'm a detective," he replied affably, before cocking his head and adding, "Plus I grew up in a four bed with my mom, my Grams and four older sisters. Nosiness was a skill honed from birth." She let her eyes drop away from the screens to his for a second, her face softening a degree.

"The FBI was looking to widen the intake from the professions; I was nearing the end of my residency and starting to question where next. It seemed like a good fit."

Kryngold's lips quirked around his coffee cup at her very proper response. "Was it?"

"I'm still here."

"Other things than love of the work can keep you in a job," he observed from experience.

She did not say anything, just blinked slowly as she turned back to the monitors, and he wasn't sure if he had given away too much about himself, or her. 

"What keeps you in police work, Detective?" she asked eventually, just as his coffee was starting to cool.

Kryngold shifted on his cold, hard seat and rolled his coffee cup back and forth in his hands. "Oh, for me it's love of the work, hands down. What's not to love about hookers beaten to death by their pimps or a violent husband finally getting coshed over the head with a skillet."

"There's some justice in the latter, at least," she said with a vague smile that he found himself returning.

"More justice than we get from the courts a lot of the time."

She opened her mouth to say something, and snapped it shut as Mulder's voice crackled through the speakers.

"Incoming."

Kryngold and Scully pored over the small screen displaying Mulder, and the petite vamp approaching him. Even through the grainy flicker of aging equipment, Kryngold could see she was a looker.

"All positions: the suspect is approaching Agent Mulder. Please hold your locations, we need to get her outside before we can make an arrest," Scully broadcast urgently, and then almost seemed to hold her breath as they waited for the play to start.

***

"It's you again," the woman from the other night observed in a voice that, even over the din of the club, was a sin waiting to happen.

"It's me," Mulder confirmed, looking down at her. She was almost a foot shorter than him and built slightly; it was hard to believe that this slender creature could hurt a fly, let alone kill two men barehanded. 

"Are you waiting for your girlfriend?"

"She's not my girlfriend."

"Really," she said wryly.

"Really," Mulder echoed firmly, conscious that Scully was listening to every word and yet at the same time knowing that girlfriend was the least of what she was to him. "Can I buy you a drink?" he continued casually, gesturing to the bartender.

The woman cocked her head as if considering and Mulder held his breath. He had to gain, and keep, her interest if he had any hope of getting her out of the crowded nightclub so they could make a safe arrest. It was the key point they'd agreed on in the briefing earlier - they couldn't risk upsetting the suspect when they were surrounded by people, and when they had no idea how exactly she attacked her victims.

"Tequila," she said, sliding into the seat next to him. "With lemon not lime."

"Two tequila's, lemon not lime, please," Mulder said to the bartender, who was leaning over the polished marble to hear their order. With a nod of his carefully styled hair, the bartender turned away to fix their drinks and Mulder looked back down at the pretty woman sitting next to him. She'd tucked her heavy coat beneath her on the stool, so he could see her clothes now. Chunky black boots hooked over the foot rail, expensive looking jeans and a fashionable vest top with tiny sequins stitched in long strands on it. When she moved, they caught the light and it was almost like she was shimmering.

"My name's Matt," Mulder offered as the drinks arrived. He slid hers along the bar toward her.

"You don't look like a 'Matt'," she said frankly, incisive eyes watching him carefully and Mulder forced his face to remain neutral. There was something odd about her. Not necessarily unpleasant, but even in the short time he'd already spent in her company, she'd come across as intense and, if not prurient, certainly sexual in a way that was more than just a young woman aware of her abundant charms. Her focus on him the other night had been almost animalistic; it was like she could see right through him. He got the same vibe from her tonight, but it was tempered by a sense of melancholy.

"What do I look like?"

"I don't know. Not a 'Matt'."

Mulder affected a good-natured shrug and cocked his head, "What's your name?"

"Celia," she said and then with a whisper of a smile she clinked her shot glass to his and downed it in one. The arc of her neck was smooth and graceful, and drew his eye to the sculpted lines of her clavicles. An irregular, round pendant with some kind of engraving rested in the hollow of her throat, secured by a simple gold chain.

Mulder drank his own shot and bit into the tart lemon slice that accompanied it. He squinted in the dim light to try to see what the engraving on the pendant was while Celia waved to the bartender for another round. It looked like some kind of animal.

"That's a pretty necklace," he commented over the second round of shots, "What is that?"

She looked startled, hand flying to her throat and for the first time he noticed the neat little bandage wrapped around her right index finger. "It's ah, it's a bat."

More shots were ordered and downed while Mulder considered the significance of the bat. In Mayan culture the 'zotz' was a symbol rich in duality. On the one hand it represented the guardian of the underworld and on the other, it was a powerful sign to mark against enemies. With everything they suspected Celia of doing, the dark symbolism seemed to fit perfectly.

And yet, it seemed to Mulder that rather than enticing him out of the club so she could murder him, her primary concern tonight was getting hammered. 

He set his shot glass back on the bar as carefully as a man who was unused to hard liquor could after he'd downed three shots in fifteen minutes. For the first time that evening, Mulder was grateful his role as prey-in-chief had exempt him from wearing an earpiece feed from the operations center. He did not need to hear Scully telling him to be careful to know she was thinking it.

"You don't drink much, do you?"

Mulder blinked and focused his increasingly bleary gaze back on his companion. "Not so much, actually," he admitted and then hesitantly, he added, "You seem like you have form though?"

Celia looked at her empty glass and huffed a laugh in a gesture that was altogether too Scully-like. "I kinda just wanted to get out of my head tonight," she said, and then she glanced at him sideways and shook her head self- deprecatingly. "I guess I ended up going for off my head instead."

Mulder found himself laughing genuinely. Vicious killer with razor-sharp blue eyes she might be, but there was something innately honest about her too. And introspective: tonight she clearly had a lot on her mind.

"Bad day?"

She leaned back on the stool and ran both of her hands through her glossy hair. The gesture pulled her shirt taught over her ample breasts but it was unmistakably an unconscious manoeuvre.

"Oh man; bad year," she said offering him the first proper smile he'd seen her give.

"It's only March. Plenty of time to turn things around," he counselled carefully, and she met his gaze, eyes contemplative in the smoky room.

"I'm not sure I can turn this around," she confessed quietly.

Mulder nodded and ran his tongue over the backside of his teeth as he considered the right words to use. To some extent he sympathized with the girl. He himself had been in plenty of situations that he'd lost control of.

"You know, sometimes when I've found myself in a situation I couldn't turn around... the best thing I could do was just stop. Stop going forward in the wrong direction, stop trying to change things." He could picture Scully's eyebrows tickling her hairline, but she knew as well as he did that finding common ground with the suspect was key to a hostage negotiation. And wasn't that essentially what this was?

The young woman fingered her empty glass as he spoke, watching her bandaged finger play around the rim as she seemed to process his words. "I'm sorry," she said slowly after a pause, "I came over because I remembered you from the other night. But actually I don't think I'm very good company this evening."

Mulder felt the chance to get her outside of the club alone slipping away. "Listen, don't take this the wrong way but do you want to go somewhere? Get a cup of coffee?" he suggested, grasping at straws and yet trying to sound relaxed.

"I don't know if that's a good idea."

He swivelled on his stool to face her, holding his hands up, "It's up to you," he said gently, a twinge of unexpected guilt plucking at his belly as he coaxed her outside, knowing what would happen. "But you seem like you could use someone to talk to..."

Celia nodded slightly, almost absently agreeing with him and then she blinked, tapped the glass rim three times with her injured finger and pushed it away from her across the bar. She looked up at Mulder with eyes that were no longer introspective and he recognized the change immediately. The guilty pang in his stomach morphed into something much more ominous as the energy around her shifted palpably. The hairs on the back of his neck stood to attention, and instinctively, Mulder sensed that he was now the prey.

"Ok," she agreed, her friendly tone subtly hardened as she slid off her stool and shrugged into her coat, "Let's get out of here."

Mulder forced a smile and waved her ahead of him out of the club. He wouldn't let her walk behind him for a million bucks.

***

The air was brisk when they stepped outside the club and Mulder resisted the temptation to dig his cold hands deep in his pockets. He needed to be on full alert right now and was grateful to find the icy breeze swiftly clearing the lingering fog of tequila from his mind.

He glanced surreptitiously toward the alley where the surveillance van was parked, hoping that it wouldn't be long before the cavalry arrived. He had his backup weapon in an ankle holster, but he couldn't risk drawing it when she was so close to him. No one knew how she did what she did, but Mulder was acutely aware that one touch from her could kill him. He waved vaguely up the street, 'There's a cafe I know over on West Goethe that does great coffee..."

Celia's eyes were everywhere, cat like, and she settled on him briefly. "Sure," she murmured, and Mulder moved slightly to the side of her, keeping a couple of feet between them on the sidewalk as they headed south.

"Have you lived in Chicago long?" he asked, his own eyes darting round. The street was fairly quiet, particularly as they moved further away from the club, but it was also poorly lit. Punctuated by garbage cans and trees, there were too many shadows, and he knew that no one would attempt an arrest until it was absolutely clear.

"My whole life," she replied emotionlessly, and then gestured to an alley coming up on the left-hand side, about halfway between Espionage and the surveillance van. "I know a shortcut to West Goethe."

Mulder wondered if the hammer of his heartbeat was as audible as it felt. He glanced around the street. He could make out Maxwell, the narcotics cop, only just exiting the club now, and following him, a patrolman whose name Mulder couldn't remember. Ahead of them, he heard the slam of a heavy car door. Hoping fervently that it was Scully and Kryngold, he nodded reluctantly at Celia, "Lead the way," he said weakly, dropping back as much as he could without being obvious.

By the time they were a half dozen steps into the alley, the towering red-brick buildings on either side obliterated what little light there had been from the moon and the streetlamps. Sixty feet away, obscured by a number of dumpsters and overflowing trashcans, the alley appeared to open out onto some kind of access road. Mulder glanced up to the left and the right, to rusting fire escapes and darkened windows, and felt the walls close in on him. 

"Ah, you know I'm not sure this is right. Maybe we should take the long way?" he suggested, trying to control the volume of his rapid breathing in the invading silence of the alley. Alarm bells sounded loudly in his head, syncopated with the brisk thrum of his pulse, and he felt the air in the alley shift. Energy crackled around them as Celia stopped ten paces in front of him and turned. Her eyes were huge and black and dead. Whoever Celia was, she was not in control of herself anymore. 

"Celia," he called firmly, "Celia, you're not yourself right now." He wanted to reach for his weapon, to have the comforting grip firm in his palm, but the few seconds it would take were too many. He knew instinctively that he would be dead before he had the gun out of the holster.

"I am myself," she said, stepping towards him stealthily. He edged backward, sensing the hard barrier of the building just a few feet behind him.

"Celia, you're not. You aren't this person. Take control of yourself!"

"I am myself. I am death and rebirth. I-"

"Federal Agent! Freeze!" Scully bellowed from the end of the alley. "Put your hands where I can see them!"

Celia hesitated for a split-second, giving Mulder the opportunity to dive to the side and grab the dented lid off one of the trashcans. He wielded it in front of himself like a shield and the next few seconds seemed to happen in slow motion as Celia lunged forward, arms outstretched. 

He heard the crack of Scully's weapon discharge, and watched Celia's body jerk to the side as the bullet sliced through the skin of her left bicep and ricocheted off the dumpster behind her. Her balance was disrupted but momentum carried her forward, sending her flying into the trashcan lid Mulder held up. Pain, like a thousand static-shocks, zipped through him and the jolt sent him flying backward into the wall like a ragdoll.

Through swimming vision, he watched Scully racing toward them, gun held out in front of her. Celia stumbled forward, finding her feet again and diving straight for Scully, grappling for the gun.

They struggled over it, the younger woman's strength almost inhuman despite her injury. She shoved Scully violently against the wall, slamming her wrist into the unforgiving brick again and again until Scully cried out and dropped the gun. It clattered to the ground at their feet and Celia released Scully's wrist, rearing back to slam her right fist into Scully's face. 

The blow snapped Scully's head around to the right and momentarily dazed, she faltered, giving Celia the opportunity to pull away and set off toward the far end of the alley. Shaking her head to clear it, Scully stumbled after her, picking up pace as she went. 

Mulder struggled to his own feet, feeling like he had shoved his finger in a wall socket and staggered after them. About ten feet before the end of the alley, Celia skidded to a stop and reached to the side. In the darkness, Mulder couldn't make out what she was doing until it was too late.

"Sculllaay!" he yelled as Celia reeled around, both hands clutching a thick length of pipe and swung it with all of her might into Scully's abdomen. It clattered loudly and metallically to the ground and Scully followed it, dropping like a sack of potatoes to her knees and then curing over her stomach in agony.

Celia ran then, her footsteps echoing up the buildings as she escaped. Behind them, Mulder heard the breathless wheeze of Kryngold finally arriving and exclaiming in shock, "Motherfucker! Get patrol round the other side! Get an ambulance!"

Mulder sank to the floor beside Scully, the stench of piss and decaying garbage almost overwhelming. "Jesus, Scully, are you ok? Talk to me!" he urged, grasping her shoulder and brushing sweaty hair from her face. A violently colored bruise was already forming on her left cheekbone and she squeezed her eyes shut as her left hand grasped for his sleeve, fingers biting into his bicep as she tried to straighten up.

Her breath came in shallow, agonized pants and Mulder's panicked, shaking hands flew over her face and upper body. She hissed when his fingers brushed over her right wrist. "Sorry!" he muttered, trying to swallow the panic that was rising through his gut and slowing his hands as they catalogued injuries. A serious blow to the abdomen was not what she needed just weeks after being shot, and definitely not what her doctor had in mind when he suggested she ease herself back into work slowly. 

"Scully, please talk to me!" he urged breathlessly, pulling her head into his chest and pressing a kiss against her ear - to hell with whoever was looking. 

Scully sucked in a shuddering breath, "I'm ok, Mulder," she ground out in a shaky voice, right before she threw up all over his coat and started to cry.

"Shhh," Mulder murmured, shucking the $1500 dollar Boss coat into a puddle of who knew what beside them. In the distance, he could hear an orchestra of sirens getting closer, and he pulled Scully into his arms as she sniffled an apology and curled around her poor, abused stomach. "Shhh, Scully, I'm right here."


	8. Chapter 8

Foggy Bottom, Washington DC March 11th

The Bureau issue Motorola trilled loudly, vibrating its way across the nightstand until it was bumping up against the half-empty tumbler of water.

"Jesus, Jana, it's 2 o'clock in the fucking morning!" Rob Cassidy grunted, stuffing his greying head under the heavy goose-down pillow. "I've got committee at 8am."

"Hush Rob, go back to sleep," Jana mollified, slapping her hand around on the nightstand until she found the offending phone, and then clasping it to her chest as she slid reluctantly from the warmth of her bed.

"Cassidy," she said, closing the bedroom door quietly, and making her way down the wide, wood-panelled hall of the row house to the study. She flipped on the overhead light and blinked against the brightness.

A familiar voice, crackled wearily down the line. "Ah, Assistant Director. This Fox Mulder. I'm sorry to call you at this hour."

Jana's heart sank. As an Assistant Director, in fact throughout her career in the Bureau, it was a rare call in the middle of the night that brought good news. She pressed the heel of a hand to her forehead. "Agent Mulder, what's going on?" she asked, her quick mind already working through the possibilities.

She knew that the Agents had hoped to take the suspect into custody earlier that evening; she doubted Agent Mulder would be calling if they had succeeded. Or if the operation had turned into anything other than a fuck-up.

"Unfortunately the operation this evening was unsuccessful and the suspect absconded before an arrest could be made," he said formally in that dull monotone of his, confirming her suspicions. 

"What happened?"

"We surveilled the club where we believed the suspect was picking her victims. I encountered her, encouraged her to leave with me. Outside, she attempted to attack me. Agent Scully got one round off, clipping the suspect on the arm. The suspect turned on Agent Scully, before escaping. Chicago PD have an APB out on her." 

"No one else was wounded? No civilians?" she pressed, ever the politician, and felt slightly guilty that this question came to her tongue before one about Agent Scully.

"No Ma'am," he confirmed, and Jana settled with some relief on the edge of an uncomfortable burgundy Chesterfield sofa. The room had only recently been remodelled; three months of disruption and more money than was sensible spent on interior designers to get Rob the office he'd always wanted. Jana was happy with her little cubby in the den, where she had an uninterrupted view of the garden through the French doors.

"And Agent Scully?" she asked, running her hand over the cold leather sofa, and thinking that this dark and masculine room reminded her too much of her own office at the Bureau. Too much of testosterone and backroom deals.

Down the phone line, Agent Mulder sighed quietly, a rustle of fabric as he shifted the phone against his ear. When he spoke, his voice was suddenly tired and Jana could picture him sitting wearily in an uncomfortable hospital chair, elbows on his knees and his handsome face etched with worry. "The suspect struck her across the abdomen with a length of lead pipe."

"Is she alright?" 

"The hospital is keeping her in for observation. She's in a lot of pain and they have her pretty drugged up, but she's going to be okay."

Jana nodded, a twinge of regret in her belly. She recalled the young woman's stiff movements as she'd gotten into her partner's car that day in Georgetown, clearly still some way from perfect health; and Walter Skinner's concerned face when he'd asked her to assign them to a case outside Kersh's reach, where, the unspoken assumption was, they'd be safe. And yet here was an unwelcome reminder that they were never safe; that the pursuit of justice would put them in harm’s way time and again, and neither she, nor Walter Skinner could change that. Jana sighed, her age and the hour and the circumstances catching up with her. "I'll need a report on my desk tomorrow morning."

"Yes Ma'am."

"Get some sleep Agent," she offered softly, conciliatingly, and there was a quiet pause on the line before they both disconnected.

Jana snapped the clamshell shut and tapped it against the arm of the sofa; she had a call to make, and she knew the recipient would not be pleased to hear from her. Pulling herself to her feet, she walked over to the sideboard and popped the etched stopper from the decanter, pouring a healthy measure of 1984 Glen Garioch into a tumbler.

The call to Walter could wait five minutes.

***

Northwestern University Hospital, Chicago

The first thing she noticed when she woke up was the smell: iodoform, industrial detergent, stewed vegetables. Then came the sounds: a dull hum of machinery interspersed with rhythmical computerized beeps, the distant warble of a PA system paging someone. Last came the sensations: the itch of a cannula in the back of her hand, the ache in her abdomen reminiscent of the first weeks after she'd been shot.

Scully raised her head and forced her bleary eyes to open, confirming that once again she was in the hospital. She dropped her head back on the rock-hard pillow with a groan.

"Hey, how are you feeling?" Mulder's voice filtered in from her left and she turned toward him, opening her eyes again. He was leaning forward from a faux-leather wingback chair upholstered in the most putrid shade of green. He looked worn out and wrinkled, but he offered her a warm smile as he reached for her hand.

"Hmmm," she hummed druggily, lifting her right hand to scrub the sleep from her face and finding it aching and ringed by violent purple bruises. "What time is it?"

Mulder eased himself slowly off the hideous chair and onto the bed beside her hip. "A little after three; you've been sleeping for a couple of hours." He brushed a strand of hair from her face and smoothed his thumb over her forehead. "The drugs they gave you were pretty strong."

"What'd they give me?"

"Percodan." He looked amused as he added, "You were pretty vocal for about twenty minutes before it kicked in and you passed out."

If she didn't feel so terrible already, she'd have been mortified. As it was, the look on her face must've belied her embarrassment because Mulder leaned down to kiss her forehead, pulling back only a few inches before he spoke. "Hey don't worry about it; you're kinda cute when you're out of it. Besides," he added in a confidential tone, toying with the blunt ends of her hair, "I'm in no position to judge the things people say when they're on painkillers."

Scully's head was swimming. The case had turned into a disaster; she'd let the killer escape; her body felt, well, like she'd been smacked in the middle with a lead pipe and now, apparently, she'd unintentionally announced her love for Mulder for a second time - despite never having had to courage to say it when she wasn't out of her mind on passion or Percodan. 

"Mulder," she started, not quite knowing what to say but feeling strongly that she had to say *something*. Something that would let him know it wasn't just the damn Percodan talking. A tentative rap on the door interrupted her, and both she and Mulder turned to look.

Kryngold hovered awkwardly with his hands stuffed deep into the recesses of his trouser pockets, and for the first time she realized how wide he was; his beefy, muscular shoulders almost brushed the doorframe on both sides. "Hey, I didn't know if you'd be awake..."

"Come in," she offered, gesturing weakly with her right hand. Mulder shifted on the bed so he was sitting more firmly by her hip and braced one foot against the floor, but he held on tight to her uninjured left hand.

"How're you feeling?"

"I'm ok," she said, for the first time mentally cataloguing all of the places where it hurt, and finding the list of places where it didn't was shorter. "A bit bruised, but I'm fine."

"That's good," Kryngold nodded, shifting from foot to foot and pretending not to notice that she and Mulder were holding hands. "I feel real bad none of us got there in time to stop her taking a pop at you."

Scully shook her head in lieu of words he wouldn't believe anyway and offered a small smile of benediction which seemed to perk him up a bit.

"How's your hand?" he asked Mulder and Scully looked up at him quickly, confused.

Mulder held his left hand up like he was pledging an oath, the palm and pads of his fingers red and irritated. "Like I've laid out in the sun too long," he said, and Scully shifted her wounded right arm to pull his hand closer to her face so she could inspect the contact wound from where he'd held the trashcan lid. The burns, thankfully, were superficial and not even blistering. 

"We're ah, running the information we have through the Cook County clerk's database," Kryngold said as Scully released Mulder's hand, "Any girls born between '69 and '77 with the name 'Celia' or a variation on it - it'll be a long list but we'll run it through, check them all out. If she was telling you the truth, we'll find her."

"I believe it was," Mulder said honestly, and Kryngold nodded.

"There's one thing I don't understand," Scully said and both men turned to look at her. "She meant to hurt you Mulder - only the trashcan saved you from a more serious injury... or worse. Why didn't she kill me? We fought hand to hand, and other than her being incredibly strong, it wasn't any different than any other altercation."

Mulder pursed his lips thoughtfully, "Maybe because she couldn't."

She and Kryngold watched him work a theory through in his quick mind; synapses firing and connecting rapidly and intuitively even through his exhaustion. "Maybe this energy that she can summon, maybe it only comes when it's a man she's attacking."

"Mulder, energy doesn't work like that -"

"Scully, energy doesn't let a 110lb woman blast the middle out of a man with her bare hands - but it did. Twice. There's something fundamentally different about this woman - I don't know if it's a hex," he theorized, his tone taking on a tinge of excitement, "Or, or shamanism or whatever it is, but she changed right in front of me."

"How do you mean?"

"You had the audio feed - you heard her. She didn't want to leave the club with me; her whole demeanor to begin with was different than the first time I met her. She wasn't predatory - she was... I don't know, she was introspective, she was melancholic. I think she was genuinely regretful of what she'd done, and felt like everything had spiralled out of control. I pushed her to leave with me, and I saw something... malevolent... overtake her. I could feel the energy shift around her."

"You don't blame yourself, Mulder." She said it like a statement, but there was a question in her eyes and he shook his head, giving her fingers a squeeze.

"No - no of course not. If it hadn't been me tonight, it would've been someone else tomorrow, or the night after. She will kill again; I don't think she has a choice."

Scully let out a breath through her nose. There was always a choice. "That still doesn't explain why she wasn't able to hurt me the same."

"Ok, so what would make a woman want to hurt a man like that? Not just hurt him, annihilate him?" His molten eyes searched her own, and they both knew exactly why. Mulder broke the gaze to look up at Kryngold. "Could you run a check on girls who passed through social services with sexual or physical abuse - cross reference it with the list from the Clerk's office?"

"Sure, I'll get right on it," Kryngold agreed, nodding at the potential lead. He offered Scully a final, apologetic look. "I hope you feel better soon, Agent Scully. God knows what trouble this one'd get into without you looking out for him."

She and Mulder watched him back out the door, and then Mulder turned back to her, eyeing her tenderly again. "I should let you get some sleep."

"You too," she said, taking in his greyed out face. "Promise me you'll go back to the hotel and rest."

He nodded in agreement and then leaned down to press a chaste kiss against her lips, pausing to rub the tip of his nose against hers before he shoved himself stiffly to his feet. "I'll be back in a few hours," he promised, grabbing the brown sack with his poor, defiled coat in it from the chair by the door. 

"Mulder?" she called, hoarsely, just as he reached the doorway. He turned back, long fingers grasping the frame and his face held such a look of expectation, of hopefulness that her mouth went dry. "I... ah... I just... I'm sorry I ruined your coat," she stammered, thoroughly sick with herself.

Mulder's lips quirked, like he didn't quite know what to say. "Don't worry about it, Scully. You're the only one I'd forgive for throwing up on me."

It was a long time before she got to sleep.

*** Old Town, Chicago

For the fourth time in as many hours, Celia peeled off the dressing around her left bicep gingerly. The wound was deep, maybe cutting through the upper layer of muscle, and had bled profusely to begin with. It had slowed now, but every time she moved the jagged edges would pull apart and the bleeding would start anew. It probably needed stitches, but God knows she couldn't go to the Emergency Room.

She couldn't go anywhere. She couldn't talk to anyone. She was completely alone.

How the hell had it gotten to this? 

Six months ago she had been normal. Six months ago, she could never have even conceived that she would kill someone.

Celia Flores was as ordinary as they came. So there had been some unpleasantness in her childhood, her father had been a little more familiar than a father ought to be, but she'd gotten over it: she'd moved on. She went to live with her grandmother, who loved her and doted on her, and ensured she made good grades and didn't get tied down with boys. Abuela had been there for her - then and always.

But Celia couldn't talk to Abuela now. She couldn't tell her about the darkness that had overtaken her, that had consumed her and made her do things that were so very wrong. She couldn't hurt this wonderful, caring woman by confessing what she'd become.

Oh Jesus, what had she become?

***

Northwestern University Hospital, Chicago

It was a little before 8.30am when Mulder stepped out of the elevator carrying a venti non-fat soya latte and Scully's overnight bag.

Despite a dearth of sleep the previous night he was feeling remarkably chipper; perhaps due to the 6-shot Americano he'd downed on the way to the hospital. Rounding the corner into Scully's room, he found her sitting on the edge of the bed in her peach NWU gown, already showered and clearly waiting for him to arrive.

"Hey, how are you feeling?" he asked and she slid stiffly off the bed making a beeline for the coffee.

"Is that for me?"

He held it up and slightly away from her, "Are you sure you should drink this?" She quirked an eyebrow in a silent 'what the hell are you talking about, just give me the fucking coffee'. "Only this is my last clean shirt; I wouldn't want you to throw up on it."

She rolled her eyes and snatched the cup from him with her good hand, raising it to her lips and taking a long, satisfying drink. She closed her eyes in pleasure and the skin on the back of his neck tingled. Her caffeine-fix face was remarkably similar to her orgasm face.

"I, ah, brought you your clothes," he said, holding out the bag. She took it with a mumbled thanks and headed into the bathroom to change, leaving the door cracked.

"I've been thinking about Celia," he called, settling himself on the edge of the bed. "Last night she was wearing a necklace with a bat on it. In Mayan theology, the bat is a very complex symbol - it was consider a guardian both of evil and against it. It's a symbol of rebirth, not just in Maya but for Native Americans, the Chinese - they see it emerging, renewed each night from the womb. Last night I thought Celia was wearing it for its negative values - but now I'm wondering if it was more of a...a talisman against evil. She was protecting herself by wearing it."

Scully came out of the bathroom, herself transformed. She'd dressed in the clothes she'd asked him to bring: jeans which sat lower on her hips than her work wear and irritated her abdomen less, a white button-down shirt and a black blazer. She'd applied make-up and covered the dark bruise across her cheekbone as best she could, and she looked, while still tired, a lot better than she had in the middle of the night.

"Protecting herself from what?" she asked, setting the bag on the bed next to him and filling it with her soiled clothing from the previous night. Her movements were economical and slow, and she was favoring her injured wrist.

"I don't know. Last night we considered that she had been abused, that that's why her powers were harmful only to men."

"So, what, you think she's protecting herself from men?"

"Or from whatever it is that's controlling her."

"Well, to find out what that is, we need to find her," Scully observed, zipping her hold-all with finality.

Mulder nodded in agreement, and nudged her thigh with his knee. "I have an idea about that."

**

Curios & Charms West Town, Chicago

Curios & Charms sold South American spiritual curiosities, herbs and jewellery out of a cramped 10 by 12 foot converted garage on North Peoria Street. The owner was only just rolling up the shutter when Mulder and Scully pulled up outside, and he watched them suspiciously as they exited the car and entered the store.

"Good morning," Mulder offered as they stepped inside, triggering a mechanical bell hooked above the warped and flaking door. He held the door open for Scully and then turned toward the owner, digging in his pocket for his identification.

"I'm Agent Mulder, this is Agent Scully. We're with the Federal Bureau of Investigation."

The owner, middle aged and balding, could've shared fashion tips with Frohike. He looked awkwardly from Mulder to Scully and then back again, "What can I do for the FBI?" 

"What's your name, Sir?" Mulder asked as he pulled a creased Xerox from his pocket and smoothed it out on the peeling Formica counter between them. The photocopy showed the earring Scully had found in the warehouse the other day; it was a little over-exposed, but the distinctive engravings were still clear.

"Uh, Evan Hunt."

"Do you recognize this Mr Hunt?"

The greasy little man's eyes flitted between them again, before directing downward to the black and white image. He leaned over to look more closely, exposing his ineffective comb-over, and Mulder made the mistake of glancing down at Scully. She ran her tongue against the side of her mouth to stave off a smile and looked away.

"It's a bat," he said, straightening up and running his hands down his vest anxiously.

"A bat?" Mulder said, surprised, looking back down at the paper. "It looks like an elephant."

The storeowner looked at him helplessly, "It's a bat."

Scully's eye roll beside him was almost audible. "Do you recognize the earring, Sir?"

"Sure, we stocked them last year."

Mulder's interest piqued, "Yeah? Would you happen to have records of who bought them?

"'Them'?" Hunt chuckled, exposing an uneven rack of yellowed teeth. He reached to a shelf behind him and slapped a thick and battered storage binder unceremoniously on the counter. "We only sold one pair."

Mulder held his breath and both he and Scully leaned forward for a better look as Hunt leafed through coffee stained receipts and invoices.

"Oh. She paid cash," Hunt said, sounding disappointed, and Mulder rocked back on his heels, hopes thwarted.

"It was a 'she'?" Scully asked.

"Sure, great gal, comes in all the time," he replied, looking a little moony around the eyes.

"Do you have a name?" Scully prompted impatiently, enunciating the words carefully and Hunt blinked back into the room.

"Oh, Celia."

"Surname?"

"Um, let me think. It was somethin' Hispanic I think... Flor... Florrick? I'm not sure, something like that."

"Ok Mr Hunt, thank you for your time," Scully said, having reached the end of her fairly limited patience. She shot Mulder a significant look, "I'll call Kryngold."

He watched her leave the shop, still moving awkwardly as she fished her cell phone from her jacket pocket. "Just one more question," he said, turning back to Hunt, "Did the bat hold some significance for her?"

"She said she wanted something to make her feel safe. She bought a pendant with a bat on it too, right after Christmas. Say, is she ok?"

Mulder sucked his lower lip into his mouth and refolded the photocopy of the earring. He tucked it into his pocket. "I don't know," he said honestly.

***

Old Town, Chicago

Kryngold dug through the shit in the glove compartment, tossing scrunched up napkins, dry pens and fuel receipts aside as he searched fruitlessly for the half-eaten pack of Nicorette he was sure he'd stashed. With a defeated grunt he shoved the drawer closed and leaned back into the driver's seat and pulled a donut from the sack on the passenger seat. He sank his teeth into the greasy, sweet confection and lamented his lack of self-control. This fucking job would be the death of him.

He was parked three buildings down from the duplex where Celia Flores lived with her Grandmother. The neighborhood was working class, the street lined with two-story apartment blocks with clean windows and litter-free porches. It was very much like the street he'd grown up in himself. Two unmarked cars with three police officers in each were parked across the street, and when he glanced in the rearview mirror, late winter sun cutting through the sky at a blinding angle, he spotted Agents Mulder and Scully pulling in a few spaces behind him.

They exited their car casually and made their way to Kryngold's ancient Saab. Scully slid into the passenger seat, shifting the sack of donuts onto the floor first, while her partner wedged himself into the rear.

"You got a hit then?" Scully said, dusting sugar from her fingers, and even with her battered face and her stiff movements, she still looked entirely too pretty and fresh for police work. 

"Yeah. 984 Celias and Cecilias were born in Cook County between 1969 and 1977; 7 of them have records with social services related to abuse. Only one of them had a Hispanic surname beginning 'F'." He pulled a manila sleeve from the bin on the door and slid out a dog-eared social services child safety report from 1983. Clipped to the inside cover was a slightly blurry photograph of a young girl. He handed the folder to Mulder. "This is Celia Flores. I think you two might've met?"

Mulder whistled a breath between his teeth, "That's her." He passed the folder to his partner and she studied the photo with squinted eyes.

Kryngold pointed down the street. "She lives in that building there with her Grandmother; mother died when she was eight from ovarian cancer, father was jailed in 1984 for molesting her. He was released in 1987 and died in a hit and run the following year."

"What a depressing story," Scully remarked quietly, still skimming the report and Kryngold shrugged.

"Yeah, but going to live with Grandma was probably the best thing that coulda happened to her. She knuckled down in school, made good grades - an honor roll student. She's currently an Art History postgrad at UIC."

"Where the hell did it all go wrong then?" Mulder mused rubbing a knuckle over his chin pensively.

"Why does it ever go wrong?" Kryngold retorted, not meaning to sound callous, but having seen enough of life's horrors to know there were no real answers as to why people did the things they did. He pulled a pen from his shirt pocket, and flattened a Dunkin Donuts napkin on the center of the steering wheel, beginning a sketch of the building and street. 

"So, I got six guys in two cars right over the street there. Each of these blocks is split into four units - two at the front, two at the back. There's a rear exit from each building. We'll put three guys round the back here," he said, drawing a black arrow, which he embellished with some squiggly lines. "And two guys can guard the front in case she tries to run. The sixth guy will come with us."

"You know these buildings well," Scully observed.

"I grew up a couple of streets over. There's good people round here; they take care of their families. I can't imagine what the poor Grandma's gonna think when she finds out what her Granddaughter's been up to," he said, thinking of his own Grams, and the sense of common decency, and right and wrong, that was pervasive in her generation. "We've all got Kevlar vests; I brought two extra for you," he added, eyeing Agent Scully and thinking that even the extra small vest he'd brought for her would likely dwarf her petite frame.

In the rear, Mulder shuffled on his seat. "Scully, I think you should stay down here," he said, watching her from under his eyelashes.

"Given the evidence Mulder, I think I'll be the safest one there," she countered in a tone that didn't invite a response as she twisted slowly in her seat to look at him, fearless and sovereign. Something passed between them and Mulder's shoulders dropped slightly in defeat. Kryngold wondered how he stood it.

"You know she's home?" he asked.

"She didn't show up for class today."

"Let's roll then."

Kryngold glanced around the street, gratefully finding it pedestrian free and then grabbed his radio and issued the orders to the two teams. They exited the cars and pulled heavy, Kevlar vests from the trunk. The agents and each of the officers shared a serious, concentrated expression; quietly rehearsing each step in their own mind as they fitted the vests on under blazers and over uniform shirts, and checked the clips in their weapons. His own pulse was rapid yet steady in his veins, adrenaline kicking in as they each made their way to their positions.

The duplex was accessed by a shared door off the street, and the two officer's he'd assigned the front of the house positioned themselves one at the door and one at the base of the concrete stairs leading up to it from the street. 

Kryngold's radio crackled from its position clipped to his shoulder. "Team Two in position, Sir."

"Copy," he said, nodding to Mulder and Scully, and leading them up the stairs and into the building.

The Flores' lived behind a shiny green door on the left- hand side, with polished brassware and a coir welcome mat. The knocker rattled against its plate as he hammered on the door with the heel of his hand.

"Chicago PD, open up."

Within seconds the latch clicked and the door eased open a crack to reveal the worried face of an old lady.

"What going on?!" she exclaimed, accent thickened by the anxiousness in her tone.

Kryngold waved his badge, his right hand resting on the butt of his weapon in his holster. "Chicago PD, Ma'am. Is Celia Flores in?"

"Celia? What you want with Celia?"

"Ma'am please let us in, we need to talk to her," he said firmly though not unkindly. He really felt for this poor old woman as she hovered in the doorway with one arthritic hand braced on a walking cane, and the other holding a shawl closed at her neck.

Reluctantly the door swung open; firmly, and without any discussion, the three of them moved into the apartment. 

"Where is she?"

"She not well; Celia's in bed," the old woman said, cloudy eyes shifting between them. "What you want?" she asked again, as Mulder and Scully stepped past her and began looking into the rooms off the hallway. 

"Celia. Celia Flores!" Kryngold called loudly at the base of the stairs. He was just beginning to think they would have to go upstairs and get her, when a shadowy figure emerged on the landing. Four faces peered up.

"Celia. Come down please; we have to talk to you."

There was a rustle and a creak as she moved closer to the top step and into the light. Even from twenty feet away and in poor light, Kryngold could see she looked haggard and exhausted, her previously lush hair hanging in greasy, limp bangs around her face. "What about?"

From behind him, Mulder stepped forward until he knew that Celia could see him. "You know what, Celia. Come downstairs," he said softly.

She looked at him without surprise, almost like she was resigned to see him there, resigned to the fact that she'd reached the end of the line, and nodded carefully. Slowly, she made her way down the stairs, and Kryngold clenched his fingers around the butt of his gun. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Agent Mulder do the same.

As Celia reached the bottom of the stairs, her full state of dishevelment became clear. The rings under her eyes were pronounced and black; her lips were chapped and her skin was sallow and shiny. She wore a creased blouse, unbuttoned over a vest, and they could see the bunch of a bandage around her left bicep. 

"Celia," Agent Scully said softly, pushing forward. "You've been injured - you need medical attention." She reached to touch the young woman's bandaged arm and Celia jerked away.

"Don't touch me!" she said, tears tracking down her haggard cheeks. "It's not safe."

Scully held her hands up. "Why isn't it safe, Celia?"

"I don't know," Celia said desperately, voice cracking in a way that made the hairs stand up on the back of Kryngold's neck. "I don't know what's happening to me."

They stood, each of them for several seconds until Mulder slowly removed his hand from his gun. "Why don't we all sit down," he suggested gently, "And talk about it."

Celia nodded numbly, shuffling across the hall into the living room, where she sank onto a wicker chair by the fireplace. Her arms were wrapped tightly around herself, hands tucked into her armpits, and she looked light years away from the strong and charismatic woman she had been the previous night. She looked broken, and though he held back slightly, not quite trusting her enough to let go of his own gun, seeing someone, especially a young girl, in such obvious distress made Kryngold's stomach churn.

Carefully Mulder and Scully sat down, Scully on a chair to Celia's left and Mulder on the sofa facing her. The grandmother hovered anxiously in the doorway and Kryngold tried to smile reassuringly.

"Celia," Scully began, tone carefully modulated, "Did you kill Kurt Roberts and Issac Kurtz?"

The only sound in the small house was the tick of the Mantel clock, and the crackle of Celia's throat as she swallowed tightly.

"I didn't know their names," she said in a tiny voice that they all had to strain to hear.

"Why did you do it?" Scully probed, studiously non- judgmental.

"I don't know."

"Were there any others? That we don't know about?"

"Carino, don't!" the grandmother said sharply, moving into the room, hunched over her cane but still strong. "You don't have to tell them anything."

Celia shook her head, tears tracking down her cheeks, "Abuela you don't know... I can't... I can't do this anymore. I can't bear it."

"Carino, I know you are stronger than this."

"You don't, Abuela! You don't know what I've done."

"Mrs Flores," Mulder interjected gently, "I know you're trying to help Celia. But it really would be better for her if she spoke with us. I think you want to tell us, don't you Celia?" he added, looking pointedly at Celia. The wretched young girl looked back, her body wracked with subtle tremors and her eyes black with desperation.

"I'm sorry, Abuela," Celia said, brushing her tears away with shaking hands and looking at her grandmother with such obvious regret, Kryngold believed she meant it. She turned back to Scully. "There was one other; when I was visiting a friend in Milwaukee last November."

"Can you tell us what happened?"

The clock ticked forty-eight times before she drew in a deep breath and began to talk.

"I've never ah, I was never that interested in boys growing up. When I was a child I had some... problems with my father. But they I came to live with Abuela and everything was okay." Her eyes flicked to her grandmother, who'd rested against the arm of the sofa Mulder sat on. Tears filled the old woman's eyes. "I went to Milwaukee to visit a girl I went to college with. We went out one night to a club and we met a group of guys. One of them... one of them was really into me and I liked him. He had kind eyes." She swallowed thickly, rocking back and forth slightly on the wicker chair, eyes glazed as she remembered. "He asked me back to his apartment, and ah, you know, we were together."

"I started feeling really weird. I don't know how to describe it; it was like I wasn't even in my body. I was so aware of everything that was going on; I could hear every sound... the traffic outside, some people speaking in the apartment next door. I felt... I felt like an animal, like everything that I was doing was just pure instinct. I felt so alive," she said, pausing to look at her hands, which she held up in front of her, rubbing her fingertips along the heel of her palms. "My muscles were jumping with energy, and I felt... reborn - like I was new and nothing could touch me. And I was so angry with him all of a sudden. I mean a minute earlier I had been so happy, but now I was furious and my pulse was hammering in my head and I just had to hit him. I had to get away!"

Celia paused, chest heaving as she breathed raggedly. Everyone's eyes were riveted to her. "There was blood everywhere. So much blood," she said quietly. "I got out of there as quickly as I could, and afterwards... I just couldn't stop thinking about it, about how I had... killed him."

"What about the others?" Mulder prompted after she had been silent for a moment, head buried in her hands.

"I hardly slept afterwards. It was always on my mind, and most of the time I felt awful. Sick with myself for what I'd done. But sometimes... sometimes there was this sense of... hunger in me. Like a really powerful urge to... to do it again. It was overwhelming." 

Mulder shifted forward on the sofa, resting his elbows on his knees, his fingers steepled together. "Did you seek Kurt Roberts out intending to kill him?" "Yes," she whispered.

"And Isaac Kurtz?" She nodded, guilt bowing her shoulders. "But last night, you tried to leave me in the bar. You didn't want to kill me, did you?"

Slowly, Celia shook her head.

"Why not?"

She choked out a mirthless laugh, looking up to the ceiling as tears spilled over and slid, stickily down her cheeks. "You seemed kind. I could tell you didn't want to hurt me... but then the urge just got so strong. It's like a... a guillotine that drops, and it severs the line between what I know is right and what the urge is telling me to do."

Scully cleared her throat, "Celia, you know we have to arrest you, don't you?"

"I'm just want it to be over," she said, wiping her wet cheeks on her sleeve. "I'm so sorry, Abuela," she said, standing and coming to kneel in front of her grandmother. Kryngold momentarily tightened his grip on his weapon, even though he felt the tight burn of sadness in the back of his throat. Jesus, he must be going fucking soft, feeling sorry for a serial killer.

She leaned over until her face was buried in the eggplant- colored fabric of her grandmother's skirt, her back shaking as she sobbed. 

The old woman's own tears slid down her craggy cheeks. "Oh Carino, oh my baby," she cried, settling a swollen, knotted hand on her granddaughter's hair. 

"I'm so sorry," Celia breathed again, and the old woman shook her head vigorously.

"Oh carino, don't be sorry. This... this is not your fault."

Something mercuric in her tone sent a trickle of ice down Kryngold's spine. He felt the shift as Mulder and Scully noticed it too, their eyes bouncing off one another before returning to the old woman and her broken granddaughter.

"I didn't mean to hurt you," the grandmother whispered throatily.

Celia seemed to sense it too, and raised her head to look at the old woman. "What do you mean?"

Kryngold held his breath, scared to blink in case he missed something. Even the clock on the mantel seemed to slow down.

"I just wanted you to be safe. For no one, no *man* to ever hurt you again carino."

"Abuela?" Celia croaked uncertainly, and even from across the room, Kryngold could see her knuckles whiten where her fingers bit into her grandmother's leg.

The old lady lifted a shaky hand to Celia's face, smoothing tears away with work-rough hands, and looking at her through opaque eyes filled with love. Eyes that had seen Celia as a child, damaged and hurt by her father's vile touch, and watched her grow into a young woman whose beautiful face and sweet manner drew the wrong kind of interest. 

"I bless you, carino, bless you so no one can hurt you. But I never mean for this, for you to hurt like this. I only want to keep the men away, keep you safe."

"You did this to me?" Celia asked, incredulous. Her face was contorted in confusion.

"I only want you to be safe... I'm so sorry carino," her grandmother wept, and Celia wrapped her arms around the old woman, pressing her face into the breast of the only mother she really knew.

"Oh God," she murmured, "Oh God, I thought it was me."

The corona coffee table creaked under Kryngold's weight as he sat down heavily, letting his hand fall away from his weapon for the first time since they'd entered the house.


	9. Chapter 9

J. Edgar Hoover Building, Washington DC March 12th

"I feel like I only just said this, but it's good to see you back on your feet, Agent Scully," AD Cassidy said, peering over the top of her wire-rimmed glasses at his partner. "How are you feeling?"

"Thank you, Ma'am. I'm fine."

Cassidy studied her for a moment longer before turning her attention to the open case file on the desk before her. Her office was the same inside as Skinner's. The same as Kersh's. Bland, solid furniture, oak panelled walls and dull ochre paint. They had the same American flags, the same oversized blotter with the embossed FBI seal, the same headshots with the Attorney General. Mulder wondered if they all just got given a Photoshopped print on day one - 'Welcome to the Exec Floor; here's your picture with Janet'.

"I know what I'm reading here Agents, I'm just not sure I understand it," she tugged off her glasses and looked between them, seeking some kind of clarity. Mulder pictured her doing the exact same thing over the summer when she was roasting them for failing to follow proper FBI procedure. She was easier on the eye than Kersh, but getting ripped a new one was getting pretty old, regardless of who was doing the ripping.

He shifted in his seat, "Cecelia Flores confessed to the murders of Kurt Roberts and Isaac Kurtz. She also confessed to the murder of Mark Hansen in Milwaukee in November 1998. She's currently in police custody undergoing psychiatric evaluation."

"Yes I get all that - what I don't understand is this assertion here," she indicated the report with a wave of her hand, "That she was somehow driven to kill by a curse visited upon her by her Grandmother."

"Mrs Flores wished to protect her granddaughter. Unknown to Celia, she performed a blessing on her, which they both now believe triggered Celia's homicidal urges."

"And what do you believe, Agent Mulder?"

"I believe that Mrs Flores thought she was doing the best thing for Celia."

Cassidy looked at him hard, cool blue eyes slicing through him and leaving him cold. The late afternoon sun filtered through the blinded window behind her and made her ash hair glow like a halo. Her gaze flicked to Scully, "Agent Scully?" she prompted.

"Celia Flores has confessed to all three murders and we have sufficient forensic evidence to ensure that her confession will stand. As for whether her actions were caused or influenced by a blessing..." she released a slow breath through her nose, and Mulder sank back in his chair, preparing for her inevitable excuse. "There's no evidence to either prove or disprove it," she said and he almost rolled his eyes. "However," she continued, "Celia Flores was a conscientious student who stayed out of trouble until last November, and was, by all accounts, a model citizen. Something caused her to change."

"Perhaps the psychological evaluation will provide those answers," Cassidy said with some finality. "However that's the concern of the Cook County State's Attorney. What about the grandmother?"

Scully shrugged slightly. "She's committed no crime. And I think she's paid a very high price for interfering in her granddaughter's life, whether it was consequential or not."

Cassidy closed the case file on her desk, folding her hands on it. "Good job Agents; this was an expeditious resolution to a complex case."

She nodded their dismissal and rose, making their way to the door. "Oh, I received a call from Detective Kryngold this morning," she called and they stopped, halfway out the office. "He expressed his thanks for your assistance," she said, pausing while an expression, which might've been a smirk, crossed her face. "Colorful gentleman," she said at last, leaving Mulder to wonder what the hell Santa had said to an Assistant Director of the FBI.

He followed Scully out into the corridor and down the drab grey hall to the elevator where they stood side by side, waiting for the car to arrive. Mulder jangled the change in his trouser pocket and tried to look nonchalant as he surreptitiously eyed his partner. 

She was still holding herself a little stiffly, clearly hurting from the blow from the pipe and the bruise across her cheekbone shone through her carefully applied makeup. She looked tired - but hell, so did he. It felt like it was weeks since they'd arrived in Chicago, instead of just four days ago, and rather like travelling on a long-haul flight, Mulder had difficulty recalling what had happened when - in some ways it felt like the last forty-eight hours had just been one epic day. Had it really been two days ago that they'd made love on her dresser? They hadn't spoken about it since, hadn't spoken about anything to do with the change in their relationship really, because they had barely been alone. Even on the flight home, seated six rows apart, they'd had to keep trekking up the aisle to confirm details as they tried to prepare their report ahead of the meeting with Cassidy.

And Mulder wanted to talk about it. He wanted to do more than talk about it actually; he wanted to tear her clothes off and kiss her from head to toe, he wanted to wrap himself around her and never let go. He wanted her to say the love thing again, and be sure she meant it this time.

But then he looked down. She was leaning heavily against the rear rail in the elevator, eyes closed and her long eyelashes lush against the heavy smudges under her eyes. She was exhausted. This should've been an easy first week back, pushing paper around her desk and playing Minesweeper.

"Hey," he said, tickling the inside of her left wrist with his fingertips. She cracked her eyes open. "It's almost four, why don't we cut out early today? You look beat, and no one's going to care. No one'll even notice."

The doors swept open on the sixth floor, and Scully looked out at the bullpen and then back up at Mulder. She slapped the C2 button for the underground parking lot. "Occasionally you do talk sense, Mulder," she said, voice gravel weary.

The parking lot smelled of exhaust fumes, rubber and hastily smoked cigarettes.. He walked her to her car, and held onto the cold, steel door as she tossed her briefcase across the central column onto the passenger seat and turned around. "So, uh, I'll speak to you later?" she said, a little uncertainly, her eyes focused on his mouth.

"Yeah, I'm gonna be in all night. I got a date with my laundry room and Papa Johns."

"Ok then," Scully said, nodding, and he had to stifle a smile. This was not the most intellectual conversation they'd ever had.

"Drive safe," he said. She hummed in agreement and lifted a foot into the car.

"Scully?"

"Yeah?" she paused, halfway in the car.

"You know I love you too, right?" The words were out of his mouth before he'd even thought them, and he wondered if this was what it had been like for her. Meaning it, but not quite believing you'd actually said it.

Scully blinked rapidly, cheeks flushing, and her throat bobbed as she swallowed. "Um, yes," she replied, sounding dazed.

He nodded thoughtfully before letting go of her door and stepping back. "Good." She climbed fully into the car and he closed the door firmly behind her. She shot him a grateful look that was tempered by a look of something a little like fear, and something else that looked a lot like love.

He found his face cracking in a smile. Scully blinked at him, and then she rolled her eyes, and then she smiled back. A little shy, but still, he'd just told her he loved her and she was smiling at him. He moved out the way so she could back out the space, and he watched her car navigate the tight corners of the parking lot, until her taillights disappeared up the exit ramp.

***

Georgetown, Washington DC

The key benefits to travelling all the time for work, as far as Scully could tell, were that her apartment stayed clean and someone collected her dry cleaning from her bedroom door in the morning and delivered it back to her, neatly pressed, the same day.

Unfortunately it also meant she never had any food in the fridge and her pot plants were all plastic.

It was a little after eight; CNN was on mute, Lynne Russell's mouth moving silently as the closed captions spelled out the headlines with some really appalling typos. She'd unpacked her case, soaked in the tub until her fingertips were white and pruney and checked her refrigerator four times in case she'd overlooked something edible the first three. She pulled a box of crackers out of the back of the cupboard, inspecting the use-by date and squinting to confirm it really did say June 1995. With a shrug she stood up, knees popping, and dug her fingernail under the cardboard seal. She was ravenous; had barely eaten all week, and there was no way she could face some greasy take-out order with her stomach still aching.

She'd just poured a glass of wine, deciding the medicinal benefits outweighed the irritation to her stomach lining, when there was a knock at the door. She set the crackers and wine down on the dining table and padded over, barefoot, to the door. Mulder grinned at her through the peephole and waved a sack from Aunt Sally's.

With a smile, she opened the door. "I thought you were washing your hair tonight?" she said, her voice several notes lower than usual. She chalked it up to hunger.

Mulder brushed past her, the smell of... oh God, chicken soup and... warm bread - and, God was it possible to smell Tiramisu or was she just imagining it? - wafting up to greet her.

"My clothes," he corrected, toeing off his canoe sized shoes and laying out containers of food on the kitchen counter. "And, I dropped them off at the dry cleaners on the way over - I decided food was more important."

Scully couldn't argue with that. She pulled some plates from the rack while Mulder unwrapped two enormous chicken salad sandwiches. He popped the lids off the tub of soup. "You want a bowl?" he asked, and she shook her head, pulling some cutlery out of the drawer and dipping a spoon into the steaming soup.

"God, I'm so hungry," she remarked closing her mouth around the heavenly broth. It was rich and creamy, with just the right amount of black pepper and nutmeg. She groaned in delight. "This is good."

Mulder smiled bashfully, reaching out to tuck her hair behind her ear. "This is ok, then?" he asked, pointing vaguely at the food and yet meaning something else entirely.

Maybe it was the residual Percodan, or a pre-emptory hyper-glycemic rush, but Scully felt relaxed in a way she almost never felt. She nudged his bicep with her shoulder, "This is ok." She dipped her spoon into the soup and held it up to him. "You want to try?"

He blushed to the tips of his ears.

Mulder, who for six years had strutted round in his underwear in front of her; who'd tossed innuendos her way and couldn't see a pretty girl pass without having a sly look, was blushing because she'd offered him a taste from her spoon.

"Sure," he croaked, leaning down and drawing the spoon in his mouth. He pulled back, swallowing, and his lower lip glistened with a smear of soup. He licked it clean and then cleared his throat. "It's good. Hot."

"Shall we eat in the living room?" Scully asked, picking up the plate with her sandwich on it.

Mulder nodded, collecting his own dinner and then catching sight of her wine glass and the dusty box of Ritz. "That was your dinner?" he asked.

She shrugged and he grabbed the open bottle of wine by the neck, taking it with him into the living room. "Bring another glass then, no point letting it go to waste."

Twenty minutes later they leaned back against the sofa, bellies full. 

"The food there is fantastic. Just what I needed; thank you," Scully said sincerely, feeling the natural goodness of the meal already having a restorative effect on her. She let out a contented sigh.

"No problem," Mulder said, leaning forward to grab the bottle of wine. "It's been such a strange week," he added, apropos of nothing, as he topped up their glasses. He sank back into the warm, squashy chenille of her sofa, shoulder jostling hers.

Scully nodded. It really had.

"I guess I wasn't sure if... I wasn't sure how things would be," he confessed slowly, a little uncertainly.

"What do you mean?"

"I wondered if things would just go back to normal."

"Oh," Scully said, running her finger around the rim of her wineglass. Is that what he wanted? She hadn't gotten that vibe from him, but then, God knows, she was kind of out of practice. "Is that what you want?" she pressed cautiously, "To go back I mean?"

Mulder turned his head and looked down at her. "Jesus, no!" he said, sounding incredulous that she would even think he might.

"Because I don't," she told him quickly, clarifying, "Want to go back."

"You don't, huh?" he asked, eyes softening at the corners, where she'd started to notice a few little wrinkles appear these last couple of years. She shook her head and he twisted on the sofa so he could rest an arm along the back. He smoothed his index finger down her forehead and nose and she noticed how warm his skin was. "We're not very good at this are we? Always second guessing ourselves, and each other."

"I think," Scully said carefully, "We both want it to work very badly."

"'It'?" he queried a little too nonchalantly, fingering her hair, and she knew he was trying to get her to say it out loud.

"Our friendship. Our relationship."

Mulder hummed in agreement and trailed his fingers from her hair, around the shell of her ear and then feather-light across the bruise on her cheek. Scully's pulse quickened and small goose bumps rose on her arms.

"I love you very much," she said in a low voice, and it had been very many years since she had said those words to someone. And never with so much honesty.

Mulder leaned down and brushed his lips softly over hers, a whisper of a touch. "I don't want to mess this up," he whispered, his breath warm on her cheek.

"You won't," she said, and before she could think of a reason not too, she closed the gap and pressed her mouth firmly to his. He groaned in surprise, eyes drifting shut and his mouth softening, inviting her in.

The taste of him was so familiar, so welcoming and as his fingers curled into her hair and held her close, her hand slipped, sloshing wine down her front.

"Shit!" she cursed, breaking away and swiping ineffectively at her sweater while she felt a deep flush cover her cheeks. Really smooth, Dana.

Mulder took the now half-empty glass off her and set it on the console table behind the sofa, beside his own. She rose to go and clean up and Mulder's hand closed around her wrist. She looked down at him in confusion, "Wh-?"

His lichen eyes were dilated, eyelids at half-mast as he regarded her with a look that took her breath away. Still holding her wrist, he took the half-empty wine glass off her and set it on the console table behind the sofa. Then he tugged gently but firmly on her arm until she half- tumbled into his lap, ending up straddling him on the sofa.

She braced herself on his shoulder and he ran his hands up the outside of her thighs, her waist, lightly over her breasts until his fingers found the little pearl buttons holding her soaked sweater closed. She felt like she was on fire, her body taut and ready to snap, and then slowly he undid the buttons, never taking his eyes from hers. The sides of her sweater hung open and Mulder slid his hands under it and round to her back, tracing her shoulder blades with his fingernails. His hands were so large they spanned her entire back.

"Jesus," he breathed, "Don't you wear underwear anymore?"

Scully felt the flush return to her cheeks and the urge to cover herself was almost overwhelming. "I, ah, I wasn't expecting company..."

Mulder dipped his head and pressed the flat of his tongue to the top of her breasts, licking the sticky skin all the way to her clavicle. "Please: don't expect company more often," he muttered, dipping his tongue into her suprasternal notch and trailing it along her other clavicle. "God, you're perfect," he whispered, tonguing the line where her creamy breast turned coral and his eyes drifted closed like a contented cat. With him touching her like that, she almost felt it, and her lean stomach muscles rippled in anticipation as he drew her tight, aching nipple into his mouth and sucked hard.

She yelped and jerked on his lap, inadvertently sliding forward so that the vee of her legs was pressed hard against his groin. Mulder's lips curved in a smile around her breast. "You like that, huh?" he said, dragging his lip across to the other nipple, repeating the process. "You liked it the other night," he said watching her slyly from under his eyelashes and she had a sudden vision of his head between her legs, lips pursed around her clit. Her mouth opened and closed as she tried and failed to think of a response. The synapses in her brain were firing, but the energy seemed to just fizzle out before it could connect - if he kept that up for much longer, she wouldn't be able to remember her own name. Unable to talk, she dug her fingers into his silky hair and relished in the feel of the cool strands sliding through her fingers.

"Does it hurt?" he asked in between nipping at her breasts with his teeth, running a finger carefully across her belly.

"Not when you're doing that," she managed, grabbing fistfuls of his t-shirt in clumsy hands and tugging until he let go of her and helped her pull the shirt over his head. His chest was magnificent; muscular, broad - she could spend the whole night just stroking it.

But then he thrust up at her, the hard ridge of his cock grinding into the slick cleft between her legs and she decided just stroking his chest wasn't going to cut it.

Her fingers skittered down his stomach, scrabbling at the buttons on his fly and he shifted his hips to help her. The acrobatics involved in getting the rest of their clothes off left them both a little breathless and flushed, but eventually he was exactly where they both wanted him to be.

"Hi," he said, smiling and brushing hair from her eyes. She smiled back, leaning forward to rub her nose against his.

"Hi."

"We know how to do this, right?" he asked, running his hands up and down her back, a little like she was a dog. It was comforting more than arousing, and she shifted her hips against him a little, drawing him deeper inside. Her bruised stomach muscles protest slightly but the overwhelming feeling was one of completion. She drew Mulder's lower lip between her teeth. 

"Uh huh," she murmured, rising up until he was barely inside her and then sinking, slowly, back down. The burn in her abdominal muscles intensified but not enough to blunt her pleasure.

She released Mulder's lip as his head fell back against the sofa and his hands slipped down to grip her hips tightly. "Oh, Scully," he groaned, squeezing his eyes closed in a grimace. 

She found the little wrinkles at the corner of his eyes with her fingertips. "Look at me," she whispered, and he opened his eyes, watching her as she took him in hard, deep strokes. Sweat beaded on her brow. Her lungs and her belly burned with the strain of the position, with her general weariness.

"This is hurting you," Mulder gasped, slowing his movements.

But Jesus, she was so close. *He* was so close, she could see it in the manic look in his eyes - and she wanted this for them so badly. She shook her head. "Touch me," she said, taking one of his hands off her hip and pressing his fingers to her center. His eyes took on an even more frenzied look as he circled her slick, swollen clit with his forefingers.

She rotated her hips against him, keeping him deep inside as her orgasm built. "C'mon Scully," he urged desperately, his own hips moving in counterpoint, "Come for me." He gripped her clit between his thumb and forefinger, pinching, and her climax hit her with a jerk. Her pussy clenched around him and he continued to grind into her, prolonging her pleasure as he sought his own. "Jesus!" he bellowed as he exploded into her. 

"Jesus," he repeated with a breathless laugh. He kissed her damp forehead as she slumped over him amoebicly. 

"Yeah," Scully agreed, realizing that she had neither the energy nor the inclination to move her jelly-like body. Mulder seemed to be feeling the same way. He reached shakily for the barley colored throw draped over the arm of the sofa and tugged it loosely around them both. She dropped her head onto his shoulder, nose buried in his neck, feelings of exhausted contentment warm inside her. "Can we just... not move for a while?" she asked.

Mulder's arms tightened around her and he pressed a kiss against her hair. "I'm exactly where I want to be," he said.


End file.
